


After the Fall

by Lrihgo, pwnthosenoobs



Category: RWBY
Genre: Adventure, Afterfall!AU, F/F, Survival Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:11:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 49,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2029779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lrihgo/pseuds/Lrihgo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pwnthosenoobs/pseuds/pwnthosenoobs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For some, life as they have known it has been turned on its axis to an unimaginable hell after the world is bombed flat. For others, it's just another day of business as usual. Survival isn't a choice, it's a death sentence. Yang is willing to risk everything to make sure her sister is kept out of harm's way. They tread on, trying to find out what's next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. White Gold Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! There's a new dual-written, multi-chaptered RWBY fic on the block. Me and the co-auther, my brother Tino, are finally happy to begin to release it since we're comfortable with the amount we have pre-written. Art and more can be found at my tumblr at chilopawbi.tumblr.com and follow Tino at pwnthosenoobs.tumblr.com while you're at it! Updates are looking like they're going to be weekly, so stick around! Thank you and enjoy.

There was enough wreckage, rubble, and debris piled around to last her a lifetime. The same dreary scene stretched all the way to the horizon and back, molded into a tragically beautiful sculpture of death. As far as she could see, there wasn't anyone in sight. Not even the birds flew high above. An eerie still suffocated the air, the breeze absent in the stalemate of the after fall.

Yang had no time to mourn, worry, or cry. After she had come to the conclusion that it was just her and her younger sister, they had to do whatever they could to survive. She didn't know if there was help out there, or if someone was coming to look for them. For all she knew, they could have been the last people in the world.

They had stayed a long time in the bunker beneath their house, searching a radio station for some sort of news from up above. The dark had become their salvation. It was comfort and quiet while above was chaos and horror. There was a lack of surprise on neither of their faces when they finally surfaced—everything was gone, decimated and destroyed.

Ruby shouldered her bag at her back, ashen eyes glued down to the floor to her every step, head hung low and her face hard with a certain determination that she lacked in her heart. She wanted to stay as strong as Yang, never once flinching in the face of destruction of everything they knew. When they had surfaced from the bunker from days of loud, unearthly booms and screams, Yang never once wondered the why's or how's. She simply told her younger sister to start packing and off they were, running their heels into the ground and grudging on.

Yang kept her eyes ahead, running over the basic necessities to human survival over and over again in her mind as she climbed through house rubble and barely standing structures. Water, food, shelter. They took the rest of what they had from their safe haven—which wouldn't have lasted forever—and packed them into backpacks and carried them along.

Some places still fumed and smoked, while other small fires were still burning on, and Yang made sure to not step through them, mindful of her foot position as any injury would surely be fatal without the right help out here. Their first aid skills between the both of them would suffice, but only if they were careful. So she made sure she had a boot solid on the ground before taking a move forward. She reached a gloved hand up to wipe at her brow, scanning the remains of these homes for anything useful, noting that it had never naturally been this hot at this time of year.

"Stay close," she warned her sister who was trailing behind her, though she knew Ruby was responsible enough to have already been doing that. Yang just wanted to be certain.

The deathly silence around them was interrupted by her older sister's two words and Ruby perked up, heart pounding in her ears as she immediately shuffled among the debris to get within arm's length of her, but at the cost of clumsy footing. She tripped, a strangled yelp leaving her as she put both of her hands out to catch herself. Yang couldn't react fast enough to her sister, her own heart speeding up in panic as she zipped around to see what had happened. Luckily, a single wooden board lay across the floor and she caught herself on that in light of the broken glass just a foot away.

Yang was down by her side before she even spoke. "Sis! You have to be more careful," she warned, her brows furrowing at she willed her heart's beat to calm.

"Ow, ow, ow..." She murmured, readying herself to stand before she realized the shakiness of her limbs and the sweat at her forehead. Just then, a gleam caught her eye amongst the rubble before her and she looked between the glass, catching sight of a shattered jewelry box. Before her was a glimmering necklace of gold beneath a sheet of steel. They would have missed it if they kept going!

Ruby lunged forward, inspecting the piece as she sat on the floor, eyes wide as she turned the necklace between her splintered palms. "Yang, look! Do you think it's worth something?" Ruby stared at the piece of jewelry, entranced by the craftsmanship. She had never seen anything like it in her life. Not that she had been one to partake in such fine adornments.

"Maybe. It's hard to say what people find valuable now. But... worry about your hands!"

She went to pocket the necklace into her backpack's strap, her eyes finally meeting Yang's violet ones before she realized what exactly her older sister was talking about.

"Huh?" She looked down at the reddening flesh, hands shaking as she inspected them. "I-I'll be fine. It's just a l-little..." Suddenly the blonde took up Ruby's palm, inspecting the worst of the damage and let out a long sigh. A sharp noise of surprise left Ruby. "H-hey, be careful!"

"Geez, you have to be more careful first," she told her, plucking the wood out of her hands that she could easily make out. "I can't just give you a piggyback ride through all this terrain, even though I'd like to... but I'm sorry for catching you a little off guard. I didn't mean to pull hard on you or anything."

With a few more soft noises of complaint as Yang picked at her splintered palms, Ruby looked down to the ground with a bit of a pouty face, rubbing her hands gingerly. "Sorry I... I shouldn't have fallen and... sorry," she murmured meekly.

She let go of her reluctantly, coming to a stand and looking around, putting a hand on her hip. "Should probably take a rest anyway. Can't remember how long it's been since we did that, heh."

"It'd be nice to take a pit stop," the brunette replied under her breath. She didn't want to say how tired she was. She wanted to at least somewhat keep a front to Yang so she didn't have to worry about her so much. Yang was strong, so she had to be, too.

The blonde sighed, really hating having to chide her sister about something like this, but she couldn't stress enough how important it was to... stay in one piece. "Okay," she concluded aloud, crossing her arms and still looking around. Always wary. "Pop a squat, and you can have some water too."

Ruby let her shoulders droop and a thundering sigh fall from her lips. She went to rub at the back of her neck and shouldered off her backpack, adjusting to sit on the very wooden plank she had caught herself on just moments before. She surfaced her water jug and a protein bar, fiddling with the wrapping of the food quietly. In one swift movement, Ruby pulled back to hood and popped the end of the chocolate in her mouth.

Yang sat on a pile of concrete, shrugging off her backpack, too, and fishing out a water bottle. All of the adrenaline was making her ignore her bodily functions, so it would have been a good thing to drink something.

"Yang?" A few chews later, "Um... where are we exactly? Where are we going?"

Yang uncapped and lifted the water bottle to her lips, not answering her sister right away, her lilac eyes on the ground. She took a few gulps, wiping at her lips and sighing. "We gotta be somewhere around the park," she answered finally, having walked from their house to the said location several times in the past. The houses were hardly discernible from one another now, though, and walls previously standing weren't very useful walls anymore. "And... I'm not sure, sis. Some place to crash, or friends. Friends would be nice..."

Ruby fell quiet at that, chewing on her protein bar idly, brows furrowed and her shoulders slumped. She went to wrap an arm around herself, knees drawing close to her chin and her eyes downcast in thought. What were they going to do?

What was left for them anyway? Why did they continue on when there was nothing? Trying to imagine how things had managed outside of their bunker was scary enough on its own. Friends... was everyone okay? Would there be anyone left if they went looking for them? Was there anyone in the world?

"We should get moving, then..." Ruby offered after she finished up her snack and took a few gulps of precious water. She was still hungry, but that should keep her going for a while. "Maybe there's a refuge somewhere..."

"Maybe," Yang repeated, hoping that her sister's words were true more than anything. The silence stretched for a long while as her eyes were elsewhere, not settling on one thing for too long. Her gaze began to drop, however, and for a moment she looked the weariest she had ever had in a long while.

Suddenly, Ruby was feeling the day's work, as well, eyes heavy and all the walking felt throughout her whole body as a pause became of the sisters. The rest was much needed, but it would be way too short until they found somewhere to sleep. Sleep sounded soooo good right now.

Yang flashed Ruby a smile before clapping her hands together and shooting up, hoping her sudden display of energy would inspire the same in her little grumbling sister. "Off we go, huh?"

Ruby squeaked in surprise as Yang jumped up, her heart pounding out of her chest.

"And what ARE you doing?!"

A strangled yelp also sounded from the brunette at the other sudden voice near them.

Yang's brows furrowed and she looked around, wondering where that feminine voice came from. A few large pieces of concrete fell from a particularly large mound and up peaked a stark white head, burning eyes settling on the both of them. Though it looked more like she was hiding from them than trying to do... whatever it was she was trying to do.

"Uh... what?" Yang asked, surely reflecting both of their opinions. The head was gone and instead she called from behind the waste.

"You... should not be TOUCHING things! What do you want?!"

Ruby shot to her feet, almost dropping her water bottle in the process.. "DUGH! W-what the?!" She looked to the new voice, or... where she kinda thought it was. A flash of white was all she had seen. "Uh... Yang? Did that pile of rocks just talk? Am I going crazy?"

"Not quite," Yang countered coolly, her smile unwavering as she crossed her arms and stared towards the accusing pile. Which was being particularly territorial for... well, considering what was here.

With the conversation that was going on, the girl concluded that they meant her no harm, so that just encouraged her bravery, and she stepped out from the ruins, picking through the remains with her legs wobbly. Of course it would be difficult for her because she was wearing heels, which could have also been called white in the past. She flailed on her own two feet, but she managed to find stable ground and stared menacingly at the two of them, putting her hands on her hips. For the most part, minus a few stains and smears, she managed to keep her clothing pretty white as well, probably meaning that she had just about emerged from underground herself.

"I don't know what you think this is, but I'll have you know that—" Her speech halted suddenly when she saw the remnants of her jewelry box on the ground, ice blue eyes setting aflame all over again. "YOU! thief!"

Ruby didn't expect to be verbally assaulted by a crazy white-haired girl, of all things, so any words came out a grumbled, confused mess, her brows furrowed and a bit of an embarrassed blush at her cheeks as she began to march towards Ruby, in which Yang intercepted and put her hands up. "Woah now," she cooed, the smile still not gone from her face. "Do you realize what's happened around you or not?"

"This is... WAS my house, and you're stealing from it!" she snapped. "I can be sure of that!"

"H-hey! Finders keepers! Why don't you go back into that rubble you had established over there!?" Ruby flared back behind her sister, fuming that this girl had the nerve to try and take what she found, especially after her little fall. "You didn't look so worried about your jewelry before I came along! You're just tryin' to pick a fight!"

"Let's talk about this!" Yang reasoned, moving to match her as the hot-headed girl tried to side step her.

"I DID NOT COME FROM RUBBLE! My father is a part of the government!" she shot hotly, only able to point an accusing finger at Yang's little sister. "I come up from underground and find YOU TWO going through my things?! What am I supposed to think?!"

"Hey, hey, hey! We were just passing by and thought the place was empty," Yang answered, her smile gone now and her brows furrowing.

"Ooooh, so you thought the owner was gone, so THEN you thought you could get away with this?!"

"Well, conventional punishments aren't exactly in place right now, so—"

"SO IT'S OKAY TO TAKE MY BELONGINGS?!" The white haired girl was now fully looking on to Yang, who was shying back from her pure rage. Just a little.

"Well, no, but—"

"So you admit you're wrong!"

"Hey! Calm down! Don't talk to her like that!" It was Ruby's turn to get a bit protective as she stepped from behind Yang, ashen eyes flaring with determination to get this girl's fury off of her big sister. "Geez, have your stupid jewelry, it's ugly anyway!" She reached into the pocket of her backpack she had shoved it in and held it out to her, pushing Yang aside in the process and her brows furrowed. "It isn't even worth the trouble of a girl who probably isn't going to survive the night!"

"How. DARE! You!" The girl snatched the necklace from her, waving the jewelry in front of Ruby's face. "This is 18-carat white gold that I got on my sixteenth birthday! But you probably wouldn't have been able to tell anyway!"

Ruby shrunk back at the girl's biting remarks about her stupid necklace, putting up a pouty face at the situation, hands balled into fists.

Yang frowned even more, feeling a whole lot more awkward, unsure of whether or not it was from the embarrassment of being caught in this situation or if she had nothing to do or say to quell the girl. "Hey, we mean no trouble, so we'll just get going."

"Go!? Just GO?!" she asked loudly, her arms flailing a little at her side before she stomped on the ground. "I'm not exactly done with the lot of you crooks! First and foremost, you obviously don't know who you're dealing with! Second of all..."

Yang stopped listening because her eyes drew past the lot of them, seeing the glowing of light approaching. She narrowed her eyes before they widened in surprise, and instinct acted before her mind did. "Get down! Hide!"

"Huh? Yang? What's—OH!"

She seized the both of them, pushing them down and nailing her back against the nearest crumbling wall. The newcomer yelped but otherwise didn't make another noise, pressed into the ground next to the blonde as Yang crouched over.

The hum of an engine neared and Ruby perked up, straining hard to hear. Did they see them? Why were they hiding? Didn't they need help?

"What are you—" Weiss started hotly.

"Shhh!" Yang hushed, no longer allowing this to go on as she watched the approachers. It was a vehicle, a jeep without a hood and with several masked people looking about. It most certainly didn't look like help, as they were all holding intimidating looking rifles.

Despite her concerns, Ruby didn't voice any of them aloud, the uncertainty silencing her and Yang's seriousness, quite frankly, was scaring her.

Groups, hoods, masks and big weapons. It looked like some people were taking all of this a lot better than others were. Who knew what they would have wanted to do if they had actually been found. She didn't want to think about it. Who knew what sort of desperation the desire for survival brings to other people? Their situation wasn't looking too good.

"Okay," Yang said finally when only the dirt kicked up by the tires hung in the air. She came to a stand, her eyes still on where the car had been. Ruby allowed herself to take a breath of relief when the gathering and the jeep were out of hearing range, far off and on their own business. The other girl also stood and dusted herself off, huffing loudly.

"What was THAT all about?" she asked sourly, looking at her even more ruined clothes.

"Looks like some bad news. We're not the only people on the streets and you're lucky you ran into the good crowd," Yang pointed out, turning back to the girl and crossing her arms.

"Yeah? W-well..." She seemed to start on something, but her face fell for a moment before she tried to start up again. Still nothing. "I-I... I know my father will have a lot to say to you. And what has happened here." She crossed her arms to match Yang as well, though it was more in defense of her dignity than a display of amusement. "So... I'll go find him. And you can... stay here for all I care!"

With that, she turned right on her high heels, marching back to... wherever, though her meaningful stride soon turned into struggling and wobbling all over again.

Yang sighed, wondering whether or not she should let her go. "Sure a handful," she mumbled under her breath, a hand dropping to her side while the other rested on her waist.

Ruby tilted her head as she watched the retreating figure of the white-haired girl. "She is a handful. Something about her father? Ugh... really, do you think she'll be okay? I mean, if she approaches everyone like that, then I really don't see her lasting very..." She trailed off at that, shoulders drooping and an ebb of guilt burrowing into her.

"Yeah, well... there's not much we can do," the older sister reasoned, turning around and putting her hands behind her head. She felt bad, truly, but dragging along company that didn't want to be there was a disadvantage to both parties.

"Yeah... kinda feel bad though. We should get going..." The younger sister went to collect her things she had left out in the open, staring in disbelief as she noticed her water bottle had perished on its side in the earlier flurry to hide. She winced, noticing just a gulp left as she screwed on the lid and packed it, worry furrowing her brow.

Before the white-haired girl could disappear out of sight, she paused, her clenched fists at her sides. She spun back around, looking back at them with a glare that looked like she was going to explode on them again.

Ruby then turned back to Yang just in time for the crazy girl to be back and demanding something of them. She seemed to deflate though, walking back towards them with some purpose. "As the daughter of the Commander of Defense, you're obligated to escort me," she said matter-of-factly, putting her hands on her waist. "We have to find him and... and find out what they're doing about all of this!"

"Huhwhatnow?" Ruby said as she neared the two. "Um... well, they're currently doing nothing."

"You are just one rude surprise after another, aren't you?! Don't you think since all of this happened he's trying to figure out how to help us?!" Now the white-haired girl stabbed her pointer finger mercilessly into Ruby to accentuate her words.

Ruby's eyes widened and her shoulders grew tense as she leaned away from said accusing finger, staring at it and wondering for a second if it would be totally called for if she bit her or something. She then decided that wouldn't help their situation at all and she doubted she wanted stingy-girl taste on her tongue. Ruby was left dazed at the hard-headedness of the white-haired girl.

Yang had watched the whole thing, absolutely amazed that anyone could be like that at a time like this. If what she was saying was true, though, and her dad was a government official, didn't that mean safety and all of the things that came with it?

The girl turned from the both of them and began to lead the way. "Come on! I know where his office is."

"Maybe we should trust her," Yang reasoned when she was out of earshot. "If her dad's big cheese like she says, and she knows where he is, then he has to be in probably one of the safest places in the world right now."

"Uh... it seems to be our only option. I mean, it's a good deal, I guess?" She started walking after her with a sigh. "Hey! Princess! You said your dad was Commander of Defense? What was his name? Sheman? Sneezey?"

Yang picked up her bag and followed after, putting her hands in her pockets and frowning as she watched this girl, who zipped around and stopped once again, looking crossly between the both of them. "My name is NOT 'Princess', it's Weiss. And my father happens to be Richard Schnee. He knows top secret military codes that could reverse all of this, I'm sure of it!"

"Yeah, wouldn't it be nice to press a button and undo all of this... not likely, Weiss," Ruby murmured, looking forward at where the white-haired girl was going. Which looked like a whole bunch of nowhere.

The blonde blinked at that, her shoulders relaxing a little bit as she was finally giving them some sort of legitimate information that she could utilize. "Heya, Weiss. Uhh… nice to meet you. I'm Yang. And this is my younger sis, Ruby."

"So... do you even know where you're going, there? Where was your dad last when you spoke to him?"

Weiss rolled her eyes, turning and marching onwards. "I DO know where I'm going! I've been to his office plenty of times! So you should just—j-just let me think!" She stomped where she stood, looking around at everything.

Ruby flinched at Weiss' tone, still on edge, loud, and all those other wonderful things that made her a complete joy to be around. She blew a quiet raspberry in her direction, but otherwise didn't say anything else.

After a moment or two, Yang was able to fully catch up with her, inspecting her to see what her pause was all about, her hands still in her pockets. Did she break?

Yang wasn't exactly met with the hot-headed girl she had encountered just a few moments ago. Instead, she seemed sort of skeptical and more mellow as she glanced about. A frown was fixed on her pale face, but that all only lasted for a moment before her visage hardened again. "Let's go," she demanded a little quieter than before. Yang just followed along, taking a moment to glance at Ruby to see if she could collect her opinion on this from just looking at her.

"Yeesh..." Ruby muttered as she followed after, in turn, a shrug at her shoulders and an uncertainty in her eyes as she looked back to her big sister. What exactly had they gotten themselves into?


	2. Pocket House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me and Tino have decided to update this story bi-weekly. Anytime Saturday and Wednesday will be game. Thank you for those of you who have put this story on your watch/kudos. We're excited that you guys are excited! Again, our tumblrs are chilopawbi.tumblr.com and pwnthosenoobs.tumblr.com.

The three continued on in relative silence, as Weiss didn't seem entirely interested in starting any minor conversation. When five... ten... fifteen minutes passed, Yang was starting to feel uneasy. "I hope those guys from before are nowhere near here," she said a bit too loudly, though it was a thought that had randomly crossed her.

Ruby was so glad that her big sister had pitched on something to talk about. She had a feeling she hadn't best represented herself in front of Weiss yet. She wasn't a thief or anything she was making her out to be. She was a super cool girl. Or at least she like to think. "Oh, right! What did you see exactly, Yang? I didn't get a glimpse at them. They had a car... do you think we can get one?"

The blonde looked at the Weiss's backside before concluding that she looked completely disinterested in pitching in to this conversation, so she turned her attention to her sister. "Well, we can probably get a car, but… it's just really asking for trouble. They're big, they're loud, and surely most of these cars don't have the keys just lounging in side of them… they're much less functional too."

"They may be loud, but it sure is a quick get away... and plus, I don't think hot-wiring one is that hard..." Ruby trailed off. Having been on their own for a while, it was useful to pick up a couple street tricks as the opportunities had shown themselves. In a pinch, what little knowledge she had of hot-wiring would sure come in handy. She had never tried herself personally, but practice would be nice.

"True. I'm not against the idea or anything like that! It'd be a lot faster, and we wouldn't have to be so tired all the time!" Yang smiled, going plop a hand down on her sister's shoulder. "I think you can pull it off. You're… small and nimble! I've got faith in ya."

Ruby couldn't help the slight blush at the praise, beaming at her sister's encouragement. "Ah... well... I kinda don't have any tools for it, though. A screwdriver or two would be nice. And some wire cutters."

"Don't worry! I'm sure there's a hardware store around here somewhere, or something." It was a little easier to feel more optimistic when talking about these sorts of plans, and she was glad that she was seeing Ruby in slighter higher spirits, even if Weiss was sort of trying to ruin that for them.

"Yeah, I'm sure there is! Should we try to find one first? Hey, maybe if we even find a place around here, there's bound to be a tool box or something in a garage somewhere! Hey Weiss, do you think we can do that? 'cause I bet it's a far was to your dad's office, isn't it?" Ruby took the liberties of quickening her pace to include the white-haired girl, smiling from ear to ear and excited to get the plan in action.

Weiss was silently brooding that the siblings were happily conversing amongst themselves. But when Ruby caught up to her, she remembered why she didn't want to talk to them. They were still dirty thieves in her book! And they wanted to still do something like that, which was illegal. But… she had some time to herself as she was actually taking her first few steps out in this world, the first thing she did being yell at people who were trespassing.

In all honesty, though, her shoes weren't exactly made for walking, and her feet were starting to hurt. A car ride was very desired right about now. Her icy eyes darted from Ruby to the path ahead, which was hardly familiar anymore. So maybe it wasn't a bad idea after all. "Fine," she finally said, making it seem like it was truly her decision whether or not the group of them would be walking or driving. She quite liked having the largest say in it all. "Get us a car then. As long as you're escorting me, I don't care how we get there."

Increasingly encourage by even Weiss' approval, Ruby did a little victory jump, giving a holler of pure joy. "Woohoo! Yes! Alright! Well! Let's see if we can't find some tools!" Ruby ran ahead, hands clenching onto either strap of her backpack as she started jumping through piles of fallen structures and bricks, kicking aside the occasional debris as she ventured through what could be discerned as a drive through leading up to a crumpled heap of a house.

"Hmm... not getting into here!" She yelled off to her slower companions before jumping across the street to the opposite "house". This one was equally as trashed, with the doorways still standing and the garage door caved in beyond recognition. Only when they were a couple blocks down, did Ruby actually find somewhere with a manhole big enough to fit herself. "Hey, hey! I think I can get in here! It's worth a look! And it's not totally flattened inside!"

Weiss followed at a slower pace, but Yang was sure to catch up to Ruby when it appeared that she had found something. "Careful!" Yang found herself shouting as she approached, grabbing onto one of the straps of her bag as she looked at the wrecked structure. "Gonna try and climb under there?"

"Welp! Small and nimble, yeah? I could do it!" She was already shedding off her pack and grinning, giving a few prep stretches before she examined a certain bend in the garage door, trying her hand at lifting an edge of the bent metal just a bit, but it wouldn't budge. No need, she just wanted to see how much wriggle room she could manage. Ruby pulled off her sleeveless red hoodie. With a huff, she was on the floor, sitting first before she stuck one leg in and another and gradually slipped into the space, which was a little difficult, since there was a heap of fallen material in front of the hole, but she kicked past and managed her way in, crouching low with a bit of a cough at the dusty air.

Weiss sighed at them, picking the cleanest patch of grass she could find (which was tough) and plopped down on it, making a face of disgust as she inspected herself. "I'm disgusting and dirty and I want a shower," she complained, though she wasn't directing that to Yang too much. She did partially want Yang to do something about it, which was why she said it. But, she was ignored.

"Hey Yang? Can you pass me my flashlight? That little hole at the top isn't going to let enough sun in," she called from the other side, rubbing at the slight scuffs she got at her elbows.

"Already on it," Yang called as she went into her bag and pushed past some things before finding the desired item. She switched it on to make sure that it was working, though it was flickering a little bit. Yang tapped it on her palm for good measure before placing it at the small entrance. "If you think you're in any danger, don't hesitate to say!"

"Sure thing! And thanks, Yang!" The flashlight disappeared into the hole and Ruby pointed it around, wondering how exactly it was this place fell. It couldn't have been a direct blast, that was a bit away from here. She hadn't seen it herself, but if it had this much impact on the area around it... the whole neighborhood had tumbled from the force.

She flashed her light source around, noticing that there was still a car parked inside. Most of the ceiling caved in on top of it. Ruby managed her way around it, searching for anything of use at all. A petrol can would probably do some good. She went and picked that up, stepping over a skateboard and squinting as she looked over a collection of chemicals, some already spilt over and the area smelling greatly of ammonia.

She sifted through the bottles and gallons of stuff she was unfamiliar with. She wished she had paid a little more attention in chemistry... geez, what could they possibly need? She felt so stupid then. "Uh... Yang? There's a bunch of chemicals in here, but I couldn't possibly know if any of them are useful..."

Yang put her hands on her waist, looking up to the sky and appearing thoughtful. "What're we gonna do with all of that? I mean, unless we're building something for science class, it might not be very useful." She kicked a bit at a small piece of concrete at her foot, looking to the ground. "Unless there's hydrogen peroxide, you can probably ditch the rest."

The tell-tale small brown bottle became apparent quickly enough. She reached for it. "Right... yeah, I forgot about that..." She placed it next to her petrol container and squinted at the other stuff. She never really did understand how any of this crap ever worked. It all looked like water to her. "Uh... car soaps... fertilizer?"

"Oh, car soaps always smell really nice," Yang commented, smiling and looking to the busted in garage door as if she could see right through it to her sister. Fresh car smell... it rivaled fresh dog smell.

"Idiots!" Weiss bursted forward, coming to a stand again and approaching the blonde, her heels clacking with purpose. She turned to the garage door, raising her voice to address the one inside. Ruby braced herself as a commotion went on at the other side of the garage door, brows perking up as she listened to Weiss before she realized she was naming off stuff."If you could find any bleach, that's useful. It helps purify water. Also, if there's any kerosene, that's fuel, which we could use for, like, a hundred things. I don't know if any nuts keep vinegar in bulk in their garages, but if you find any of that it wouldn't be a waste of time either! Or iodine, glycerin, potassium permangate, ammonia, salt!" As she was calling them off, she was counting each on a finger.

"Bleach? You mean like Clorox or something?" She looked back at the bottle she had completely been staring over. "Hey yeah, there's some here! I dunno about that other stuff, though." She collected the three bottles and surveyed her handiwork.

She flashed her light over the rest of the space, blinking as she went to explore a bit more. This was kinda fun! A glimpse of shining metal at the floor revealed several loose nuts and bolts, her excitement getting the better of her as she went and looked through a toat of what looked like crummy, old blankets. It couldn't hurt to bring a couple of these along.

She lugged the tote over, piling the three bottles on top and wondering how she was going to fit it through the small hole. She hummed and thought it over, eyes searching for more shiny goods. She got way too excited when she found a neat stash of driller bits and screwdrivers. She grabbed a handful of the stuff and tossed it into the tote, as well as something that looked like it could be used to cut wire. A scalpel, too? You never knew! A hammer, several small precision screwdrivers...

When she finally made her way back to the hole, her tote was getting way too heavy to lug around. It was filled with all sorts of tools and wires and stuff that she had no idea what it's practical use would be. It just looked kinda cool to have, she guessed.

"Hey, I'm going to slide some stuff over, get ready to collect!"

They had been standing for a bit as they heard Ruby's rummaging noises, and Yang stared incredulously at Weiss. So maybe she wouldn't be a pain in the ass the entire trip. "Uhh… okay!" Yang called reassuringly, kneeling down to the hole to get ready to pluck stuff out, with Weiss not looking like she was going to help. She mentally retracted her last compliment.

Ruby did the liberties of first sliding over the three bottles before making one large mess of stuff inside one of the blankets and bundling it up with wire in a shoddy pack and trying to slip it through next. With a kick, it was through and the other blankets were shoved through, as well.

Ruby caught eye on a pair of gloves hanging by the wall and tossed those over, too. Almost everything she had managed to pick up made it out of the hole with her, drill bits and bolts still littering the floor inside. She turned off her flashlight and then fit herself back through the manhole, scuffing up herself once again at the elbows, but offering a wide grin as she surfaced on the other side. "Ta-da!"

Yang lined up everything that her sister gave her, coming to a stand as Ruby herself resurfaced. She looked to their… bountiful new supplies, her brows furrowing and humming in thought.

"You might as well have grabbed the whole house," Weiss commented, crossing her arms.

Ruby found herself giggling, a shrug animating her shoulders. "Don't be silly Weiss, you can't fit the whole house through that tiny hole!" She said as she stood on her feet, dusting herself off.

It really wasn't too much, but it was stuff that would have inherently fallen to Weiss to carry due to the current items status of their small party. "I'm not carrying any of that."

"Well, we won't have to if we grab one of these babies off the street," Yang offered, turning to try and spot a car that was as… undamaged as possible. And something hopefully pretty big, too.

"If we can get a car running, we can probably be at Weiss' dad's office before nightfall! Piece of cake!"

"Let's count on that," Yang nodded, going to sweep up the blankets with all sorts of things in it. Or at least that's what she learned only when some random item tumbled out of it. She dove to pick it up, holding the blanket a little wiser now. Weiss just watched on, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. "Oookay, let's go find a ride!" With that, Yang seized one of the bottles with her free hand and crumpled the blanket under her other arm.

After packing a couple of items into her own pack and threw another blanket over her shoulder, Ruby smiled wide as she took the other bottle. "We should get a HUGE car! I've always wanted a huge car... like an SUV! And it's gotta be red! Oh, that'd be so cool!" Grinning from ear to ear, Ruby began to walk on, a skip in her step.

"You're acting like we have a plethora of choices!" Weiss interrupted, sighing and crossing her arms. She was the perfect vantage point to bark at both of them since they were both ahead of her.

"Hey, relax, I was just going a bit of dreaming!" Ruby looked back to Weiss, a bit of a pout at her face. Geez, what was with this girl?! In a situation like this, one would think that a bit of companionship would be welcomed and not taken advantage of like she was doing. Ah, well. If she really did stick with her end of the deal, they had a place where they were safe. Ruby realized then that even if they did find her dad and they were in a safe house of some sort, they'd still have to be around her.

Yang put in her own two cents, wondering, as well, how long Weiss would continue this negativeness before she realized it really didn't have much effect on the both of them. "Well, we can sure try to look, but I'll just settle for something big."

"But we should take whatever we get," Ruby murmured in conclusion as they walked by a car whose windows were all shattered and the paint was charred off.

"Who knows. Maybe we'll get lucky and find your dream car?" Yang asked with a wide grin, feeling hopeful to fulfill even that small goal of Ruby's. To see her so happy and exciting was a whole lot better than before, even if they had slightly sour company. Weiss was looking off elsewhere, her eyes tracing the skyline and for once not looking entirely infuriated.

"Maybe!" Reinvigorated by her sister's enthusiasm, the excitement that Ruby felt continued even over the silence and the crunching of their footsteps.

The minutes seemed to pass as the three of them trekked on, well out of Weiss' neighborhood and into a shopping center that was well past ransacked. Numerous pieces of trash decorated the floor, two cars a centerpiece of destruction as they stood in the aftermath of a collision.

"Wow..." Ruby murmured, in awe of the beautiful chaos of the scene and the unnatural stillness it inhabited. It was like stepping into a painting, the scene surreal in a way.

The fact that she was even witnessing something like this really settled in the realities of the situation, and Yang had to keep herself from completely stopping dead and staring in disbelief. It seemed as if Weiss was captured off guard as well, her eyes landing on the both of them to check their reaction for once.

Yang seemed to be the first to break out of the trance, stepping forward with reinvigorated purpose towards the scene. "Well, gotta start searching, right?"

With a nod, Ruby went on to walk up to the two cars, inspecting the buckled hoods and the leaking fluids around them, intrigued by the impact and the glass sprinkled across the floor. She backed away, humming as she looked past the scene to the newly tagged buildings. Red spray paint, graffiti she didn't recognize. All graffiti kinda looked like gibberish, but she could scarcely make out with looked to be a wolf. She tilted her head at the display but continued on. Inside, the store's shelves were all swiped clean and trash caked the floor. The only thing the scene seemed to be missing was people. Or bodies, in any case.

Both of their attentions turned to the graffiti as well, and Yang looked to her sister and moved on just as quietly, still having her curiosities about the symbol as well. It was Weiss that lagged behind, her icy blue eyes centered on the demanding sight of the red wolf.

"There's no mistaking it," she spoke up, fiddling with the hem of her skirt. "I recognize that. It's the symbol of the White Fang."

"Wait wait, what?" Yang said, pivoting around on her feet. Ruby halted in her traps, turning around at Weiss speaking up, an evident surprise in her expression as the girl finally had something to say that wasn't attacking either her or Yang.

"It's a group of faunus thugs that my dad always used to talk about," she continued on, evident dislike in her voice concerning the subject.

"The White Fang?" Ruby tested the words on her tongue, returning to look over the symbol with renewed interest. "...Doesn't look very 'white' to me..."

Weiss huffed, crossing her arms and turning to the lot of them. "What do you expect from a group of thieving, lying murderers? All I know is that they're some sort of radical group and that's all I care to know."

"I don't know what that has to do with the color red," the brunette murmured, ashen eyes scanning over the symbol one last time before she turned on her heels and looked to Yang, shrugging her shoulders minutely.

"UGH! Don't you listen to ANYTHING I say?!" the white-haired girl shot.

Yang stood and inspected it now that she had this new information, trying to remember if she had heard anything about these guys. The name felt familiar, like something that rolled on the news here and there, a robbery or arson or something. It wasn't as if she didn't like the faunus, but she really never made any friends among them; sure, she had seen them around, but that was the extent of her interaction with them. But this radical group of faunus was inherently not very friendly. Yang went and followed her sister as well, her eyes drawing to the cars, and Weiss nearly shrieked in frustration.

"Whatever! It doesn't even matter! They're probably all but a loose group of fanatics by now!"

"Loose group of fanatics? What's that supposed to mean? I mean, you're calling them 'thieving, lying murderers' but so far your judgment for thieves hasn't been so... uh, well, accurate. You just kinda make it seem like a sport calling people terrible things." Ruby had begun to walk on but looked back to her, words easy and stride unbroken.

Weiss' mouth dropped at that, almost literally boiling down from the core. She couldn't STAND this girl! And she was stuck with her too! She just… just wanted to scream, but it would do her no good. "I simply tell it how I SEE it! And you were going to make off with my necklace if I didn't catch you in the act anyway! And don't you question my judgment! I would like to see where you'd be without me right now! Perhaps enjoying a bath with CAR SOAP!?" She pointed a finger accusingly at the black-haired girl, as if all of her wrath could be channeled in the gesture.

Yang blinked, flinching at the new volumes that Weiss' voice was reaching.

Again, Ruby was tempted to bite that imposing finger she was pointing at her. She flared up again, brows furrowing and her fists clenching together in frustration. "UGH! I WILL question your judgment because you're wrong!"

Maybe it was time for Yang to intervene now. "Hey, hey, hey! Enough of all this, will ya? We're sorry about the necklace. But you really ought to be nicer to your 'escorts'!"

Ruby simply turned away in frustration, stomping off and making whiny noises under her breath. Geez, what a pill!

Weiss turned to the blonde sharply, about to bark something out to her as well, but something seemed to click with her. "…Fine," she finally said, standing up a little straighter and collecting herself again. "If you admit that you were wrong, then there's no use in beating a dead horse. We obviously need each other here, so… so we might as well act like it!"

Ruby turned back around at Weiss' "conditions" and that got her going again. She stomped back to the white-haired girl, trying to look menacing to her, even if she had a couple inches on her. "You're the one who's—GAH, WHY DO I BOTHER?!" Ruby raked her hands through her hair, making guttural noises of frustration.

Yang laughed brightly at the display of her sister, able to enjoy her suffering because she felt that if she laughed at Weiss, the girl might rip her throat out.

Weiss looked away from the sisters, and she couldn't help but smile to herself now that she had witnessed Ruby at her wit's end with her sister even laughing at her. It was like a pleasant dream come true. "Well now. There are plenty of cars here. Are we going to choose one or not?" she questioned, ready to get over their previous mishap.

"Uuuugh," Ruby slumped in defeat, dragging herself over to a nearby car with the front caved in a bit. She looked over it. Not the biggest, but the SUV would have to do until they found something else. "Let's hack at it. And by us I mean me," the brunette murmured in dissatisfaction before she went over to try the door, which was pleasantly unlocked, but of course the keys weren't inside.

With a huff, she took a seat and placed her bag in her lap, reaching for the pair of gloves she had brought and a couple tools. "Welp, get comfortable guys, it might take a bit."

Weiss didn't need to be told twice, throwing the door open and sitting down in the passenger's seat. She was used to someone opening a door for her, but she wouldn't comment on it. She slammed the door for no particular reason, probably because she was the one who had to do it. She kept looking out her side window, not even interested in watching Ruby work.

Ruby reached over and made sure the other doors were unlocked before setting aside a couple screwdrivers, a hammer, and the wire cutters on the dashboard. At second glance, Ruby noticed spots of some sort of dried burgundy on the front window and noticed that from where she sat, the dented hood kinda looked like someone had...

She swallowed hard and continued to place aside her tools and threw her bag into the back. "Right so, uh..." She paused to think, staring over her tools before she grabbed a flat headed screwdriver and stuck it into the ignition. "Who's gonna drive? I mean... I guess Yang would be the obvious choice. But I mean, how old are you, Weiss? Did you ever learn? I didn't... I didn't have the resources to try and go through the process when I turned sixteen." She positioned the hammer at the other end of the screwdriver and pounded it in with a few good whacks and attempted to turn the screwdriver to start the car. No such luck.

"I'm eighteen," Weiss finally answered, wanting to throw these things back but fighting the urge. "And I'm not driving anyone."

"You're eighteen? Wow," Ruby murmured, finding that hard to believe as she worked at the wires and ignoring her last comment's rudeness. Her little skill was getting them into a favorable situation and she didn't need to convince her of that because she was positive Weiss was well aware of that fact and was just trying to start something. She hoped, at least. Weiss was only a year older than her and she acted like she was a spoiled little kid. Totally a pain in the neck! But no matter. Maybe it'd rub off once she knew that her and her sister weren't bad company after all.

"Looks like it falls to me," Yang announced, her grin growing. She sort of just decided to not let Weiss's negativity steer her own mood. It was working pretty well, actually. Who knows, though? Hopefully it could be contagious so Weiss could catch on.

Seeming as Weiss was quick to take the front seat, Yang found that to be the perfect opportunity to climb in, throw her stuff down in an empty seat, and take the seat behind her sister, smiling and watching her over her shoulder. She looped an arm around the headrest, placing her chin on the shoulder of the chair. "Having fun?" the blonde found herself asking.

"I guess it's kinda cool to be able to actually do this, so maybe. Yeah. Feel like a big-time grand theft auto expert!" She smiled as she adjusted to look underneath the steering wheel, reaching for the other screwdriver as she removed the one from the ignition and undid the cover around the wheel by unscrewing the two notches on the bottom. She placed the piece aside, onto Weiss' lap—who let out an exasperated noise, turning to glare at the girl at hand, straightened up, and crossed her arms stubbornly.

Ruby then hesitantly reached to grab the wire cutters, deep in her concentration as she inspected the wires that led to the ignition. She shifted through the bundle, shifting through the colors and biting her lip as she racked her memory for that YouTube video's instructions. She knew she had to cut the red wires from the ignition. She did just that, stripping the ends with the hinge point of the wire cutters. The electrical rubber came off to reveal numerous copper wires weaved together. She looked closely to them and made work of cutting the two brown wires and stripping the ends to those as well.

"This entire ordeal and your ability to do something like this doesn't quite help your previous claim of not being a criminal," Weiss mumbled under her breath, though she had every intention of having Ruby hear her.

It wouldn't have been the first time that day someone had ignored Weiss's comments. "Okay! Let's see..." She had to pause to remember what to do next, eyeing the wires as if they would tell her themselves. Ruby carefully then went to twist the ends of the red wires together, pleased as the lights on the dash and radio powered on. "Cool! Okay..." Even more carefully, she touched the ends of the brown wires together and the car roared to life. "Even COOLER!"

Yang excitably cheered and clapped in the back seat, and Weiss stared wide-eyed at the display and the engine roaring to life. She had little faith in Ruby to get it to work, but she found herself getting a little excited that she managed to do that. She cleared her throat and put on a facade to hide it, seeming unimpressed. "Well, then. We should get going."

"Yep! Wow! Cool! A+, ten stars for Ruby! Yang, just make sure you don't touch the wires down there, you can get a bit of a nasty shock, I believe..." She tucked them away carefully and got out of the driver's seat, jumping around getting that bit of energy out before she had to sit and deal with Weiss. Weiss made a furious silent motion towards the junk on her lap as if to say "aren't you forgetting about something!?" but Ruby was already out.

Ruby went to give Yang a high-five, Yang sharing her enthusiasm, muttering a "nice" as their hands came together in a perfect-sounding high-five before she took the driver's seat, hopping in and adjusting her seat and rear view mirror. Ruby plopped into the back, closing her door and buckling her seat belt. "Safety first, Weiss! Buckle up!"

Weiss rolled her eyes and pushed the stirring wheel cover down onto the ground and off of her lap, huffing and staring out the window again. And after some debate she decided to pull at her seat belt too.

"Aaaaalright," Yang chimed, revving the engine a few times. It's what you did when you were used to riding a motorcycle. All of this was a big upgrade from their previous position, and there was no way her spirits would be down now. She pulled out of the parking lot, albeit a little slowly due to how much... congestion there was, smiling when she saw that there was enough gas in the tank to take them across town if they needed to. "So where to?" Yang asked, her eyes flicking to the girl beside her.

Weiss moved to cross her leg over her knee, sighing and boredly looking ahead. "Head down this way."

Yang sat back in her seat and focused ahead, always wary, especially with the sighting of their armed company from before. She got a little distracted by what she saw on the windshield, her smile fading somewhat when she realized what it was.

Ruby sat cheerfully in the back, happy to have made some progress in the day after what felt like weeks of being cooped up unknowing of what was to come and what to do. The future looked nothing but promising from her viewpoint.

"Oh! Hey! Weiss! You should try finding something on the radio. I mean. You're probably not going to find music. But like. Maybe government stuff. Maybe they've got updates!"

Weiss glared back at Ruby, letting out a long sigh that could have been mistaken for a hiss. "Would you stop trying to command me?! I was going to do that before you even suggested it!"

"Hey, you just said I suggested it! It wasn't a command..." Ruby crossed her arms, not too taken aback by the brashness. Maybe she was getting used to it.

With that, Weiss turned and started pressing buttons, trying to flick on the radio. She never operated anything like this, and why would she need to?! She had people do it for her, and anything remotely like this that she owned was electronic and easy to use.

Ruby watched her fiddle with the device before she leaned a bit forward in her seat, trying to get a better look at the radio. "Look, there. Make sure you manually go through the stations with that knob there. If you don't, it'll skip to the presets that's stored in those numbers."

"I'm working on it," the white-haired girl shot back adamantly, her hand moving to the said knob as Ruby had brought it up. Yang wanted to comment on how (relatively) well they were working with one another, but it might have just made Weiss exit a leaving vehicle. Instead she kept it to herself.

"I can't hear anything," Weiss complained, and that's where the blonde reached over and flicked the volume knob up a little. They were met with static white noise.

"That was an ancient secret magic trick," Yang stated smoothly, causing Weiss to narrow her eyes.

Ruby had to stop herself from laughing out loud at Yang's words, not doing very well as she covered her mouth and made an obnoxious noise in her nose.

"Whatever." Weiss began to slowly turn the knob, passing different frequencies but still not yielding much of anything.

The white noise filtered through the car and Ruby couldn't help but to think how eerily creepy it sounded. Looking out at the scenes passing didn't help much, either.

It was an aftermath of chaos, to say the least. What wasn't flattened and blown away was scavenged and taken apart by the absent desperate masses. It was impossible to think of this place as anything normal as it was a little more than a week ago. It was daunting as much as it was fascinating. What was out there? What did the future hold? It was all a mystery.

Yang found herself driving slow and looking out at this aftermath, as well. Weiss continued scrolling through the stations, burying her head towards the contraption with pointed concentration. Some of these places Yang recognized as being remnants of what they used to be. A place where she had hung out with friends, another where she had eaten bad fish that made her sick, a place where she had recently bought a new pair of shades...

"Is this... is this something? I think I hear something," Weiss finally said, hearing strange noise and the fuzzy droning of something that may be the start of a voice. She tried to zone in on it, doubling her efforts from before.

Ruby jumped forward, having mellowed out to waiting and surveying their surroundings. "Try a frequency or two above and below it a couple times," she suggested, eager to hear what it was that she had found.

Weiss was too concentrated to reply to Ruby, slowly adjusting the knob back and forth to try and settle on something legible. Unfortunately, though, the signal seemed to be getting weaker and weaker. She let out a groan of frustration. "Dammit," she swore, still trying her hand at it, but with no better results.

Ruby felt her shoulders droop and the need to say something reassuring was overpowering. "Man... well, it's okay. We can try again later. We're gonna see your dad anyway, so maybe he has something to say!" She smiled and inspected Weiss for her reaction, a sudden curiosity about her that she knew she probably shouldn't voice.

Why did Richard Schnee leave his daughter at home when he was probably the first person to know about this stuff?

Weiss didn't acknowledge Ruby's reassurance, instead returning to giving Yang directions.

With a huff, Ruby sat back, a little discouraged, now, by Weiss's constant refusal to accept her positive words and the loss of the radio signal making her a bit bitter. Stupid radio and stupid car.

After a minute or two the white noise of the radio was almost teasing and Weiss angrily shut it off. Her eyes drew to the front of the road, for the first time actually glancing outwards and noticing the speckled red on the windshield. "Wh-what is THAT?!" she exclaimed suddenly, her grip tightening on her chair and her eyes widening.

She looked forward in mild interest at whatever minuscule thing she was complaining about this time when Ruby remembered the blood on the wind shield.

"What's whaaa—oh." Yang had followed her eyes more outward, but realized that she was indeed talking about the mess she had noticed some time ago. "Just… close your eyes or something."

"Get rid of it!" Weiss wailed, causing Yang to cringe a little.

Ruby wanted to tell the girl to close her eyes or maybe to not boss Yang around, but the blonde didn't really seem to mind.

She went towards the windshield wipers control, trying to figure out how the thing worked and giving it some small twists and pulls. Water shot up onto the glass and the windshield wipers went on full power, only wetting and smearing the blood. Which only made it worse. Weiss screamed.

Ruby watched as worse went to utter chaos and she flinched as Weiss's scream, a noise of strangled surprise leaving her. "Weiss! Just don't look at it!" She demanded, snappy and annoyed.

Following her previous reaction, she growled lowly (a not so effeminate gesture) and glared back at Ruby, though she had no words to shoot at her. "WHY. Is there blood on the windshield?!" she asked instead, already knowing that the obvious answer wasn't the one that she wanted. "I mean… why us?! Why all of this!?"

Yang continued working the windows, and after a moment or two the windshield was actually starting to look a lot better, and for once she didn't have an answer for her right away. "Well, can't say it wasn't a long thing coming, but I didn't know it was this bad…"

Ruby decided it was better to try and reason with the situation than get more annoyed at Weiss. "Yeah... okay... I mean... we've been hearing for—what, years?—that there was some sort of faunus plot to drop bombs, right? I mean. It just seemed like words. Nothing was really ever done about it, because you know how people continue on with their days, minding their own business," she murmured thoughtfully as a pang of silence overcame the three of them. "I don't think anyone ever took them seriously."


	3. ABC Gum and Milk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tino here in the A/N today. Hello! I wanted to say my own thanks for still reading. Back to you with another installment, and the introduction of the character you were probably wondering about!

Aching legs, raw lungs, dry mouth, and a hell of a way to go. There were so many turns and twists in this world, every dark corner unwelcoming and unforgiving. Blake was scared. There was only one thing she could do to ensure her survival, and that was to walk on. She followed her brothers and sisters of the White Fang, banded together with one final mission that they couldn't fail, no matter what. They just couldn't. Failing meant the end of her people. The impossibility of success was staggering, but they still had to go on.

Hidden amongst the abandoned downtown alley ways, they moved carefully. It was a group of ten. If their tails and ears, to each their own, wasn't enough of a giveaway, they all wore the unmistakable arm band of the White Fang. None of them spoke. Huffs of breath were all that filled her ears for leagues. Crunching gravel and the kicking of dirt was the never ending symphony of her life, a constant drone that mindlessly played on. Breaks in the crackling of steps were the tale-tell of someone stepping over a body. It was easy to hear things, to stop and snap her attention to something that wasn't there. There were figures moving at the corners of her eyes, yet when she focused, there was nothing. Everyone was so on edge. It wasn't just Blake feeling this uneasiness.

That was until the faunus at the head of the pack, Adam, paused and held up a hand in warning, and Blake mirrored the clenched fist signal as well. All stopped dead in their tracks, ears perked and senses sharpened to a point as they felt the rumbling in the ground. "A car," Blake muttered to Adam, her finer-tuned hearing catching onto the sound sooner than the rest.

He looked back and the others crouched immediately, pressing themselves against walls and slipping into the shadows with an unnatural ease. They would wait until it passed. The hum of the engine grew and all eyes were downcast, weighted and tired as they willed the sound away. The crunching of shoes on asphalt, a quick tattering, then filled Blake's ears along with the hum of the closing-in vehicle. Her eyes shot to the other end of the alley-way as the footsteps closed in on them and the preparation of the entire group became a chime of steel clanking and pistols being knocked back as they tensed and readied their weapons.

It was a little girl who turned the corner and Adam was upon her so quickly, she hadn't even a second to let out a sound of surprise. She was tugged in the narrow space and a hand placed over her mouth as he collapsed her legs beneath her, forcing her onto her knees before where he kneeled. None of the other faunus moved. It was a jeep that rolled by just a couple minutes later. Humans. Guns. Stinking of filth and booze. It was too dark in the crevice they burrowed themselves in for their poor eyes to see. Not that they were looking very heavily. They seemed to be taking a leisurely joyride, if anything. Blake went to grasp at the pistol at her side, knowing full well that they could take them. The risk was too great and she knew Adam would agree to let them go by.

They were gone and the faunus all turned their attention to the girl. Another human. Fragile, small, and afraid.

"Kill her, Adam. She isn't worth the trouble. She's seen us," a faunus woman behind her said, Blake's eyes wide with disbelief as she looked to her.

"Are you crazy? She's a child," Blake said slowly, clenching tighter onto her gun. With a quick glance, she saw some of the others were equally as uncomfortable with the suggestion as she was. Her amber eyes returned to Adam, sharp and ready to defend her words—as well as the girl's life. A long pause settled amongst the group, the little girl's eyes darting around and her entire body quivering in fear.

Adam met Blake's eyes and she stiffened, that cool and unshaken gaze meeting hers, giving away nothing. No further words came to Blake as a near plead furrowed her brows, the slightest shake of her head animating her as she looked after the red-haired man. The girl was shoved away suddenly and Adam's face was as unreadable as ever as Blake turned to watch the girl trip and scamper away, the gathering jumping forward to act but halting when Adam held up a hand, stopping them all.

"We'll stop moving for the night," Adam broke the uncomfortable silence and there were no more disagreements.

\---

There were no words exchanged when Yang, Ruby, and Weiss stopped. Weiss ducked out of the car before Yang even put the vehicle completely into park, leaving the door wide open and running off. She halted at the end of the street where the beginning of the building should have been. It was all reduced to a pile of nothing. No one could possibly be occupying the place, and for Weiss, it looked like she was staring at the end of the road.

When Yang had slammed the door behind her and strolled to join her, she really didn't know what to say, but she knew what she was going through. The same emotions she was experiencing now were the same that she felt when seeing her own home destroyed. Yang really sympathized for her, keeping silent and allowing her to absorb what she was witnessing.

Ruby joined the two of them, a sense of awe and fear settling within her at the decimation of their hopes. She hesitantly looked to Weiss, more questions forming in her mind. Were they dead? Did they make it out in time? What did they do now? What could possibly be the next step?

The brunette girl looked down, running her fingers through her hair and crossing an arm over her chest. It was a dead end and now she felt as useless as sitting in that bunker for days. Weiss stared ahead at the rubble, barely noticing the two sisters behind her. She seemed to became an inanimate object, frozen in place. "We can keep trying to search the radio... and we should probably eat," Ruby said softly after the silence had dragged on for an uncomfortable amount of time.

"And after that, then wait?" Weiss found herself asking sharply, turning to face the younger girl full on, suddenly. "We go on some impossible search to keep looking for my father? Maybe we do, and keep going and camp under the stars and eat away the rest of whatever food we have, but then what? We're as good as sitting ducks! I can't tell you the last time I heard from my servants, or my father, or my guards, or… OR ANYONE!"

Yang frowned as she blew up on them, feeling as if all of her frustrations had coalesced into this final outburst. She had asked herself those kind of questions a few times, but she couldn't afford to think like that while looking after her sister. She didn't know how anyone could think like that and want to possibly continue on.

"We're just three people in a world that doesn't agree with us," Weiss continued. "Probably even wants us gone! Whatever we were before obviously doesn't matter anymore, because people with guns and numbers are suddenly the strongest and most important." Her voice had died down measurably, crossing her arms and returning her cold eyes to the ruins before her. "Everything is against us right now. We might as well be dead in this position."

Ruby stiffened, having not fully prepared herself for the white-haired girl's onslaught. Swallowing hard, she forced her eyes down to the ground, not wanting to find truth in her words, but at that moment, she wasn't able to combat them as she had managed to so easily earlier. After a day of searching, walking, hoping... she didn't have much to say now that they were at a dead end.

Weiss voiced what she and Yang couldn't. Ruby had thought it, of course. What really was to come seemed impossible. What life was there after this? Weiss was right. But then she wasn't. She couldn't be right. This couldn't be how things were supposed to end. There had to be something, no matter how little, to look forward to. Ruby had to prove her wrong. Convince her otherwise.

"Do you really think you'd really rather be dead?" Ruby asked quietly. Despite everything that wanted to speak against Weiss, she found her mouth forming an inquiry on her very last words.

Weiss parted her lips to speak, but her first syllable was choked. She fell silent at that, straightening up and tearing her eyes away from Ruby. Before she knew it her feet were moving again, in the direction of the car, though her steps were small. "N-no! I don't have… I haven't done a lot of things I've wanted to do! I don't want to give up just because something or someone says I should." Weiss paused, looking out and down the road that they had come from. "I can't do a lot of things I wanted to now, but… but that doesn't mean I shouldn't fight for what I want now, either. This world was mean… and cruel, and heartless WAY before any stupid bombs fell. Now… well, now, maybe we could do something about it."

Ruby looked up as Weiss continued to the car. There was no point if you were already dead. There was still so much left to do. She was right in this regard, as well. But she was right in a much better light.

Yang tilted her head at the girl, brows furrowing slightly and her hands lifting to rest on her waist to express much interest. She sort of liked the tone in her voice, and there was something admirable in it that she either hadn't caught before or was just inspired only recently. "Got any plans, then, Weiss?" she asked, wanting to hear the end of her proclamation, or whatever this was leading to.

"How many people in the world do you think are left? How many bodies are yet lying out at bombed sights? What if we're some of the only people left?" Weiss asked with a hint of resolve in her voice. She turned to them once more, eyes like ice darting between the both of them. "We can't just lay down and give up because there's probably a whole bunch of people who have already done that for us."

A spark of something lit within the young brunette. She perked up, shoulders straightening just a bit in attentiveness. The slightest curl of a smile came to her lips and a certain light shined in her eyes. Ruby didn't keep Weiss's gaze at her question, rhetorical as it was, but felt a resolve within her, as well, at her eye-opening statement.

"We… we should all set one goal each, something we want or something we want to do, and try and accomplish it with each other's help." Weiss crossed her arms and nodded.

"Wow..." Ruby muttered, never thinking that once in a thousand years that the white-haired girl was capable of... well, that. She realized then that there was so much more to her than loud bickering, snide comments, and relentless attitude. She looked to her, warming up at the very idea of this being the Weiss that her and Yang were going to be stuck with for what looked like quite a while.

"A goal..." Ruby tested the words on her tongue as she thought over anything possible to aspire to in such times. "I guess I've kinda always wanted to make a fire. I mean, with how cold it's getting out, I suppose it's a reasonable goal to have."

"A fire! Fine," Weiss agreed, waving her hand before she returned to crossing her arms.

Ruby smiled grandly, buzzing with growing excitement at the thought of entertaining a fire and sitting around it and burning stuff and maybe singing.

"I, for one, want a hot bath. I'm sticky and dirty and I won't put up with living like a street urchin if I could have a say in it." At that, Weiss picked her chin up a little bit and looked to the blonde.

"Oh, my turn, huh? Well… hmm!" Yang grinned widely and made it a show of tapping her chin and staring thoughtfully up into the dreary sky. "Well, if I could acquire a nice punching bag, that'd lift my spirits a whole lot."

Ruby was stuck trying to picture how exactly Weiss was going to get what it was she wanted. It sounded nice. Really nice. It was something to work on. Yang's was equally as questionable but Ruby could see how a punching bag would serve her older sister. She always went to work out when she was stressed and it turned out to be quite the outlet for her.

"A punching ba—fine," Weiss agreed before she even had anything snarky to say about it. She had an arsenal of such comments, but decided not to make any big deal about it. "We can think about the most obvious one right now. Where are we going to set up to sleep?"

Excited to have all these goals set, Ruby nodded enthusiastically, wondering where they would possibly start. "We can sleep in the car. I mean, not the most comfy thing ever, but it's safe and it'll keep the cold out. I think. I've never slept in a car. But we have blankets and it could be fun!"

"It could be fun," Weiss repeated without malice, rolling her eyes and pacing past the car. "We can burn a fire outside of the car, but we ought to move it somewhere where we won't catch too much attention."

Yang nodded in agreement, her lilac eyes resting on the ground and kicking some of the loose rocks and cement. "You're pretty sharp, Weiss. I'm thinking somewhere with enough walls tall enough around to keep some of that light to ourselves. Any ideas?"

The white-haired girl shrugged, falling silent for a second. "Old apartment buildings? A store? A garage?"

"A fireplace?" Ruby suggested slowly, unsure of the difficulties of finding a fireplace close to here. "Hm. We don't have to have a fire tonight, though... plus, it requires gathering wood and figuring out how to light it and it's already getting dark. We might have to do without it tonight. I think we need the rest, anyway."

"D'aah, we were just brainstorming, sis," Yang smiled, plopping a hand on her shoulder before pulling her into a side hug. "My cute little sister, stealing cars and wanting to start fires! Which I'm sure you'll figure it out, no problem." She began to nuzzle her cheek against her temple, laughing joyously.

Ruby made a noise of surprise and a wave of embarrassment burned through her. She looked to Weiss quickly and immediately went to try and distance herself from her sister. "Dugh—Yang! GUUUH STOP! Fbpppppt—" Her neck tilted back at an awkward position at the force of Yang's affection. "OH MY GOD STOP I'M NOT A KID ANYMORE!" She tried again she shove her away, blushing and struggling against her until she nailed her with a hook to the gut.

Yang was laughing and smiling until her little sister gave her a fist in the stomach, the fun and happiness almost leaving entirely with her breath. That didn't entirely thwart her, though. She maneuvered skillfully and put her sister in a headlock, her smile looking forced. "That—wasn't very NICE! Now you gotta kiss to make up! A nice one on the—cheek!"

"HUHK—" Ruby's breath was cut off as she fought against the implemented headlock. She struggled against the hold, noises of disapproval leaving her all the while as she tried kneeing at her older sister.

Weiss turned to the both of them and looked on with near boredom, tilting her head to the side before her brows arched downward. "Are you two quite DONE? We should go before you attract some unwanted attention!" Weiss's words were unheard to the both of them as a slightly garbled laughter left Ruby.

"LEMMEGO OH MY GOD—" Ruby managed between laughs, chokes, and other guttural noises as she fought good-naturedly against her sister's grip.

"Only if you say 'please'!" Yang growled through her teeth, her smile still as impenetrable as ever, lifting her off the ground a good time before plopping her feet back down. Weiss rolled her eyes, realizing that she really wasn't getting through to anyone and instead assumed a position that screamed annoyed in her body language with her hand on her hip and all her weight on one foot.

"PLEEEEAAASE OH GOD PLEASE—" Ruby flailed about and laughed, losing her breath and finding it really hard to gasp for air between struggling and laughing herself silly.

Yang seemed to be in thought for a moment, as if she was contemplating the conditions of her release. She hummed in thought before agreeing to release her, brushing herself off and flicking her hair behind her shoulder. "I knew I raised you right," she said matter-of-factly, ruffling Ruby's hair before heading towards the car. "Car slumber party!"

Letting out a puff of hair and taking in sweet, sweet oxygen, Ruby went to shove Yang playfully before she stretched and went to fix her hair, her gut hurting from laughing. "Whew," she sighed, surprised to even still be alive from the assault. She seriously couldn't breathe for like, five seconds. "You're evil, Yang..."

Weiss was finally relieved that the both of them seemed to be done messing around, making her way to the passenger's seat and closing the door behind her. "Total morons," she said to herself before Yang even had her hand on the door handle.

Ruby plopped into the back seat with a huff. Right at that moment, her stomach growled and she made a face, noting how hungry she was. There was no doubt that Weiss and Yang were feeling the same. With only a handful of protein bars and little to no water, she wondered how long it'd be until they found a real meal.

"Alright! So uh," Ruby paused as she went to put her large bag into her lap, shifting through the ten protein bars she had left. "What'll be your fancy, Weiss? Cookies and cream, apple pie, or peanut butter supreme?"

Weiss looked questioningly over the seat and shifted towards Ruby, placing her hand at the top and her brows furrowing. "What are those?" she found herself asking, the distaste inherent in her voice. They looked gross.

Yang pulled out and away from there, recalling a place they can reside for the night when they were on their way there and heading in that direction. "Oh! Apple pie for me," she chirped, making sure Weiss or Ruby didn't steal the best one before she had something to say about it.

Without answering Weiss's question, she handed an apple pie protein bar over Yang's shoulder, smiling as she juggled between the rest.

Yang muttered a little "Yes!", not wasting her time in getting it open. She got to thinking about how this would probably be one of the last times she tasted something like it, realizing that, in one way or another, they needed to do some grocery shopping. Their supplies would not last forever. And she was thirsty as hell but was yet to say something about it. No one really wanted to complain, she supposed, else the dread set in that they were fewer in supplies than they thought.

"I'll have a cookies and cream. Yum. You should try the cookies and cream, Weiss. I mean. I guess I could spare the second to last one!" Ruby scooted forward and waved the bar in front of her, smiling as she simply dropped it into her lap.

Weiss rolled her eyes and picked up the protein bar, deciding that fighting her would be next to useless. She was tired, hungry, and thirsty, and flavor was the least of her problems right about now. She turned in her chair and opened it, not wasting her time in biting down on it. It… actually wasn't bad.

Ruby's protein bar was entirely in her mouth by the time Weiss had taken her first bite. She leaned forward with a mouthful and asked, "Well? How is it?", which came out like a garbled mess.

Weiss covered her mouth as she chewed, her eyes on her lap. She really didn't want to admit that Ruby was right, but she wasn't left with much else to do. "It's fine," she stated simply.

The brunette swallowed and looked to her water bottle with a long glance of contemplation before passing it to Weiss, first. "Ah. Here," she offered it with a smile.

At last! Weiss received it as slowly as she could manage, as if trying to convince both herself and Ruby that she didn't really need it as much as she was letting on in that moment. "Thanks," she uttered before lifting it to her lips, refreshed almost immediately. Pulling herself away from it was a difficult feat, though, but she managed to before she left it empty.

The brunette couldn't quite put a finger on why she found watching the girl drink from her bottle so... fascinating? Ruby wasn't even sure if that was the word for it. She had to stop herself from telling the girl she could have it. "No problem," she tried to give her voice a casual air, but it just fell off slow and a bit awkward. She went to take the bottle back, looking down into her lap.

Weiss decided that those last few moments were way too awkward so she decided to pretend that nothing had happened, turning forward and continuing to eat her protein bar.

Ruby downed the rest of the contents of her bottle, finding the silence in the car strange, but not entirely unwelcome after what felt like weeks of bickering, arguing, talking.

Yang was crumbling the wrapper and shoving the rest in her face, humming in content with her eyes on the road. Before long they were at the place where they were going to set up—a small, run-down parking lot between an outlet store and a portable shop. There was a chain-linked fence, more or less still standing, so their backs would be to that. It was perfect.

"Say hi to tonight's home," Yang said as she put the car in park. "And, uhh… Ruby, how do I turn the car off?"

"Hmm?" She looked over to Yang, realizing she had said something. "Oh. Um. The two red wires curled together need to be separated. But lemme do it."

"I'll leave it to you, then," Yang smiled, waving her hand in the air and rolling out of the driver's seat, but not before unlocking the doors and moving to the back of the car. Weiss didn't move, having just finished her protein bar and pondering briefly on when her next meal would be. It wasn't something she always had to worry about, yet another aspect of cruel reality settling in.

Ruby got out on her side and pulled on the gloves she had hanging from her pocket before taking the driver's seat and carefully reaching down to untwist the copper pieces of the red wire from one another. The car engine powered off and a thought came to her. "Maybe we should check the radio one more time?" She looked to Weiss as she held the wires, silently asking for her approval to turn the battery back on.

Weiss looked to her, obviously being the one that Ruby was addressing because Yang couldn't have caught what her sister had said until she threw the back door of the car up and started laying down seats. One of her pristine brows shot upwards as she inspected the wires before she met Ruby's eyes. "Maybe," she said with a bit more force than she intended.

With a bit of hesitation, Ruby looked back to the wires and connected them, starting up the lights and the radio once again. "Um. Well," she murmured, making sure to reach and turn up the volume so that a white noise filled the air. She looked to Weiss, trusting her with the radio since she had been the one to find something earlier.

When she had made eye contact with Ruby again, Weiss rolled her eyes, realizing what her silent request was. Of course she was entrusted to the task of working the radio again. After all she did it once before, though it was hardly fruitful. She leaned forward and began twisting the knob, realizing that she couldn't have been more than a few centimeters from brushing the other girl's shoulder.

Ruby left the wires to hang, watching Weiss's fingers work at the knobs, her own hands awkwardly falling into her lap as she listened for any hopeful voices. She studied the girl before her, unable to help but feel like she had known her for so much longer than that afternoon. It was weird how things had ended up playing out.

"Weiss?" She asked quietly, eyes focused on her and her face even as she waited for her to respond, unsure of what exactly it was that she was going to say.

"What, Ruby?" she asked without breaking concentration, the questioning sounding more like an annoyed statement as she listened intently to the radio. Yang was in and out of the back seats, setting up for the night and laying down blankets on the collapsed seats.

Ruby hesitated then, knowing what she wanted to ask but wondering if she really should. But she wanted to—needed to—start piecing together the image of Weiss Schnee she had in her mind for her own sanity if they were going to be travelling together from here on out. "Do you have... any other family? Aside from your dad?"

Her head lowered somewhat at the question, her bangs falling slightly as she continued to watch the radio. Otherwise she seemed unaffected by her inquiry. Ruby's shoulders tensed a bit as a pause stilled the air, brows furrowing and a bit of regret starting to ebb at her.

"No," Weiss stated simply after a couple beats, not sounding neither snappy nor glad. "Not any that I'm close to. Some cousins. Maybe. I haven't met them, though."

Maybe she shouldn't have asked. Ruby felt that she needed to reassure her, in some way. "That's fine, you know! It's just me and Yang and there's nothing wrong with that. You're lucky you have your dad. I think that's really neat. What's he like?" A soft smile curled at her lips at her attempts, feeling they were genuine, at the very least.

Weiss was barely phased at her questions, the only one affected by this exchange seeming to be none other than Ruby. Weiss shrugged a little, her brows furrowing somewhat and her lips set in a frown. "He gave my everything I wanted. But he's not… well, wasn't… around a lot." She was indecisive as of which tense to use, choking up a little at the thought of him actually being… gone. Weiss was more hopeful than that, though. He had to be out there somewhere. He was important.

Ruby's initial attempts to seem reassuring slowly slipped away. She just felt down-right awful, now. "Oh..." Ruby couldn't find much else to say, uncomfortable from her own prying. "Must have been a really busy guy," she murmured to herself. "But he obviously really cares about you." She looked to her, the last part more directed towards the other.

There was a certain warmth in her words that was directed towards Weiss for the first time, and that caused her to shift her attention from her work, inspecting the other girl. Her eyelashes fluttered before her gaze dropped, soon returning to the radio and turning the knob again. "That'd be the first I'd hear about it, to be honest," she grumbled sourly.

"Weiss..." She trailed off, wanting to somehow convince her how she was positive that wasn't entirely true. She had at least known enough about the other girl in which she tended to either blow things out of proportion or under represent them.

Yang came in and leaned over both of them with a large smile. "All done back here! How's it look?" she asked as she moved out of the way. The space where four chairs previously were was no more, and she had used their bags as pillows with a blanket sprawled out and another folded over it.

"WOAH!"

"Man, I'll never doubt the ingenuity of an SUV ever again," Yang said mostly to herself, crossing her arms and inspecting her handiwork proudly. She easily turned the place into a bed!

It was like everything she wanted and more Ruby turned and planted her knees on the seat, arms wrapping around the head rest. "Yang, that's so cool! It looks sooo comfy!"

Weiss looked back as well, and while it wasn't her old queen sized bed at home, it would be a lot better than sleeping in a bunker cot. She found herself smiling a little (and only a little) at the prospect of sleeping side-by-side actual people.

"It is," Yang said coolly, already dipping back and sliding down to claim her spot at the side. She rested on her back and put her arms behind her head, sighing in content as she stared out the open trunk. It wasn't very scenic but she imagined that if it were, this would be perfect.

Fascinated by the sudden sleeping arrangement, Ruby wanted nothing more but to plop down onto it and doze for days. She turned and collapsed back into the driver's seat, reinvigorated by the set-up and excited to take it easy for the rest of the night. Maybe they could tell stories? Get nice and comfy? Cuddle!?

"Ah well, we can try and search tomorrow, Weiss. We're gonna have the car for a while. Let's get some rest, yeah?"

Weiss killed the radio, the noise disappearing, and a long agitated sigh left her. "Rest should be good," she stated, seeming indifferent as she exited through the passenger's door and made her way around to the back. She stood at the bumper, looking at their "bed". There would certainly be enough room for everyone, with a… cozy amount of space.

Ruby reached over to undo the red wires and the car died down completely. The brunette made sure to safely tuck away the hanging wires and jumped out of the driver's seat, heading over to the back and inspecting Yang's handiwork from the different angle. She jumped onto the back of the bumper, making the whole car shift to accommodate her weight as she landed. She kicked her legs out and looked around, smiling all the while, despite how quiet and eerie everything seemed.

"Do you… do you think you have a hairbrush?" Weiss asked towards Yang's direction, which caused one of her eyes to open.

"Umm… sure do! You're in luck." She sat up from her back and dug through it, and Weiss's shoulders dropped in reassurance. A small creature comfort that she didn't have to give up.

Ruby watched Yang fish out her brush, thinking that Weiss's hair looked fine and she didn't need to brush it. But, what did she know? With her relatively short hair, she rarely had to do anything to it. Ruby reached up and played with the tips of her hair, dyed red because that's the only thing she'd do to it.

With that, Weiss went and sat on the bumper next to Ruby, reaching down to yank off her heels because they were a pain at this point. She placed them behind her, pulling the hair tie from her hair and allowing her high side ponytail to fall. The snow white hair fell around her shoulders, and Weiss adverted her eyes elsewhere and began to bring the brush through her hair, sighing. If she closed her eyes, she could try and imagine that she was sitting at home in her own bedroom, staring herself in the mirror as she stroked the long strands.

Ruby's eyes were drawn to Weiss, struck with a sense of awe at just how utterly amazing her hair was. She didn't know much about having long hair. Yang never let her touch her hair. Like ever. Not that she wanted to, she'd probably get lost or something. She was fascinated, preoccupied with watching the brush work through the long white tresses in calming strokes. The notion was trance-like. She felt like she could watch her brush her hair for days.

Yang returned to her resting place, feeling a dull ache settle in now that she had finally gotten the chance to lay down, her eyes switching between the younger girls. "Decide amongst yourselves who gets the middle, because I kick in my sleep!"

Ruby snapped out of the spell and she tore her eyes away, making a face. "Oh geez, I forgot. I'll take middle. I'll spare you the bruises, Weiss..." She made a noise and went to crawl up and onto the makeshift bed, pulling off her sleeveless red hoodie and black t-shirt to reveal a sports bra underneath. She flopped down, sighing with relief at the sensation of horizontal-ness. "Aaaaah~"

"Good, because I wasn't going to take the middle anyway," Weiss said mostly to herself, pulling all of her hair onto one shoulder and continuing to brush. Her eyes remained elsewhere, not aware of what was happening behind her.

Yang really liked the idea Ruby was getting to, smiling widely and doing the same in shedding her flannel and yellow crop top off. She kicked off her boots and tossed her gloves to the side, laying back down and stretching out a bit. "It's kinda nice having the company of girls like this. Don't think I've ever really had it! 'Cause, I mean, I've had plenty of guy friends, so this is different," she said randomly, not liking that there wasn't a constant something filling the dead silence.

Ruby took her liberties of shedding off her shoes in lieu to Yang, wanting to sob at the comfort that she felt she hadn't experienced in weeks. "Yeah, I guess it has been since, like, grade school for me..." She had her own small group of friends, but since Ruby had been so busy with her job at the local bowling alley, she barely had time to hang out with them anymore. She wondered how they were... if they had survived. A knot formed in her stomach at the thought of her friends... people she knew... dead.

She went quiet after that, her eyes boring into the ceiling for a while before they went to settle on Weiss. "So, uh... what school did you go to, Weiss? Yang graduated from Beacon High like four years ago. I guess I would have graduated next year..."

Weiss looked at her brush for a long while after a few more strokes, twirling the item around in her hand before setting that down behind her. "I went to Vale Academy. You know, the private school," she said rather boredly, thinking about what that place must have looked like right about now. Flattened, that's probably what.

"Oooh, I heard that's a nice school," Yang commented, shifting to prop her head up with her hand. "I only ever went there for soccer competitions."

"Isn't that the place with the freaky naked person fountain out front? The one where you got dared to stick ABC gum onto the boobs?" Ruby couldn't contain her laughter as she recalled the memory, nudging her sister playfully in the side.

Yang laughed along, her eyes drawing to the ceiling as if the memory was etched in it. "Hmm… was that Vale? I don't know, I could have sworn that was at Signal!" She grinned cheekily, indeed having a mixed memory when it came to this particular mischievous doing.

"Oh, that's real mature," Weiss muttered sarcastically, turning to see how the both of them were arranged. They… they both had less articles of clothing on than she remembered, her eyes lingering on Ruby in particular. Why did she feel the need to do that? She looked to the empty spot that was supposed to be hers, bringing her legs up to wrap and arm around them as an annoying blush came to her cheeks.

"Ah, what does it matter. Beacon's the best!" Ruby smirked and went to fold her arms behind her head, giving a long sigh of content. "What do you even do in a private school? I never understood the difference between that and public school. I kinda just thought people who went there all eventually go to public school. 'Cause I've met people who came from Vale and went to Beacon. Why is that a thing?"

"What do you do in other schools?" Weiss asked accusingly, rolling her eyes. Like private schools were something to gawk over! "One has money and the other doesn't. They care a hell of a lot more for their students rather than in public schools where they make you go. That and we wear uniforms. There's just more of an aura of sophistication about it." She started sounding quite snooty by the end of her explanation, playing at the edges of her hair.

Ruby seemed genuinely fascinated at Weiss's little explanation, taking no note to her stuck-up tone. "You don't have to go to private school but you're paying for it?" She asked slowly, not sure if she had heard right.

Weiss stared at Ruby with blank, unimpressed indifference. "You go to private schools because they're good. And YES you have to pay for it!"

"…Sooo did people light dog shit on fire in the bathrooms or not?" Yang asked, bursting out into laughter the moment the question came out of her. Ruby joined her in her cackling, an obnoxious sound. Ruby was rendered barely able to catch her breath as the sisters shared a stellar high five. Weiss looked deeply unamused. She crossed her arms and huffed, looking away as the two continued with their laughter. They could have their fun, it didn't bother her!

Yang rolled back into her place and sighed as her laughter died down. Ruby laid back after said high-five, hands crossing over her midsection, cradling herself because, oh, did the laughter hurt so good. With a couple more soft, tired bouts of giggles, the brunette fell quiet, a light smile on her face as she let her ashen eyes slipped to close, an odd sense of peace settling over her.

Yang came across a thought that she was really enjoying herself, this bit of conversation feeling very much overdue. "So no dog shit?" she asked after a moment, and Weiss nearly growled.

"Of course stupid kids got expelled for dumb reasons just like anywhere else," the white-haired girl replied hotly, not knowing why she decided to give her a legitimate answer.

"I remember I got sent home for keeping a toad in my desk in elementary school. I had done all the research and I was determined to let the little guy stay in there. You remember those desks, Yang? The totally impractical ones where the top flops open and it's just a hole to put your books in? You have to put an awkward arm on your desk to prevent everything from falling off." More light laughter sounded from her, her shoulders moving with the sound.

"You bet I do," Yang replied, closing her eyes and reminiscing with fondness. "I used to go around and ask what kind of food they had in their desks so I can trade mine off. Every day! The kind of stuff Dad used to pack. Blegh." She stuck her tongue out in disgust, but a smile soon replaced the gesture anyway.

"Let me guess. The stuff he packed was actually good for you, but you decided that you wanted none of that," Weiss interceded, causing Yang to put her thumb up at her.

"You got it. And it didn't make a lick of difference because here I am, as kickin' as ever." She flexed her arm where she laid, causing the white-haired girl to roll her eyes.

With more soft laughter, Ruby continued to contribute to the conversation, eyes closed still as she spoke on. "I asked dad every single time why I couldn't bring milk to school. He told me it would go bad but I had no idea what that meant, so every time I'd ask again thinking he'd say something different. I freaking love milk..."

Weiss looked between both of the siblings because in that moment the resemblance between the two of them was just so obvious. They were related alright, but Weiss couldn't exactly tell someone how.

Yang began tapping some sort of beat at her stomach, humming in thought. "Well… that's good! Because it's good for you! Helps build strong bones and stuff…"

"Actually, that's a myth," Weiss pointed out flipping her hair behind her shoulder and leaning against the wall of the car. "It's actually detrimental to your health. You don't absorb as much calcium as you think you do, and it even increases calcium loss in bones."

Yang's smile faded, and after a moment it was placed with confusion. "Wait, what."

Ruby's eyes shot open at that and she made a face, sitting up really fast and eyeing Weiss with disbelief. "Come again?"

Weiss held the younger girl's eyes, frowning slightly. "Think about it. Who's the milk really for? That's right, calves. They benefit the most from it. Second would probably be human children. But adult people? Not likely. It's not the super ideal drink that popular medicine makes it out to be. In fact, countries who do not process and drink cow's milk have been seen to have lower rates of osteoporosis and cancer."

She paused to look between the both of them, as they were giving her a practically identical dumbfounded look. "Consuming calcium has almost nothing to do with bone health. It's an acidifying animal protein. Your body works more to get rid of it than it helps? Your body sacrifices bone density to protect your kidneys and urinary tract? So it literally SAPS your bones?!" It seemed like nothing was getting through to them so she sighed heavily, signifying that she had indeed given up on the topic.

For a long moment, Weiss's words were like a different language to the brunette. Mainly because she had stopped listening after about the third word she said. Milk wasn't really good for you after all? But milk went perfectly with cookies! There was literally nothing wrong with milk and cookies. It was probably a crime to have never tried it in certain places, maybe.

"... Milk is delicious." Ruby concluded past all those bogus facts, nodding slowly. Ah, she really could go for a tall, cold glass right now. She flopped back down, deciding then and there that Weiss was probably just jealous or something because of lactose intolerance. Poor girl.

Weiss rolled her eyes again, resting her chin on her knees and casting her eyes out of the car. "When are we going to eat again?" she found herself asking, knowing it was a trying question. She was hungry now, really, as the protein bar didn't fill her up at all, but she figured if she had to wait, she could.

"Weeell I've made a small pantry out of this middle compartment," Yang offered, shifting to open said space. The last of the protein bars were in there, along with her two water bottles, a few cans of soup and fruit, and a small package of crackers. "Obviously we have to ration somewhat until we can find more, but… but we're good for maybe 2 days, if we're careful."

Weiss decided to move into the car, now, fitting past Ruby to inspect their measly resources. Her brows furrowed as she looked on to them, sighing. "Okay… that's nowhere near as much water as we're going to need."

"Yeah, we're all gonna be pretty hungry Weiss... best to sleep it off and preserve energy and make what we have go far when we really need it to," Ruby said with a stretch and settled further into the blankets around her. She snuggled underneath the blankets now that the two had busied themselves with something else. She got the middle, so the least she could do was try to be the most comfortable with the prospect of Yang kicking her in the shin or the face all night.

"That's right," Yang nodded, leaving it open for Weiss to keep looking through. "Tomorrow we can do a bit of... shopping. See if we can find anything around here!" She slipped back down into her spot, getting comfortable again and sighing. The sun was due to fall soon, but she was too tired to be up any longer.

After making a mental note of what they had left, Weiss moved over to her spot as well, her mind on anything but laying down to rest. She remained sitting for a moment, scrolling over the other two before she decided to settle down herself, facing away from the rest of them.

Ruby hummed her approval, feeling the tendrils of exhaustion begin to take her into sleep. She peaked at Weiss, who had her back to her, and buried herself deeper into the blankets.

"Probably should close that, huh?" Yang mumbled, staring out past the opened back hatch and thinking that it would only get colder as the night progressed.

"Use your judgment, Yang," Ruby joked softly, voice sleepy, and stifled a yawn. "Mmm~night Weiss! Night Yang!"

Yang rolled her eyes at her sister, turning to shove Ruby's head into her blanket before getting up and grabbing the hatch. With a noise of complaint, Ruby rolled to get away from Yang as much as possible. "Night sleepy head," Yang said as the back shut with a loud thud and she settled back down again, having a strange sense of belonging and comfort as she glanced at the other two girls.

Weiss quietly stared holes into the side of the car as she patiently waited for the two of them to finally settle down, not bothering to wish them a good night. All she wanted was some undisturbed sleep.

The night was cold, the shell of the car keeping in the heat and the tendrils of the chill outside barely brushing Ruby's nose. It was a comfortable sleep. Better than the dark of the bunker and the cold, hard, unforgiving cement beneath.


	4. Corpses Can't Either

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rio here, author and twin number 1. Wednesday means update time! Since things are really going to start speeding up from here, me and Tino have decided that updates will only be Wednesdays from here on out until stated otherwise. Thank you for reading and enjoy.

The car ride was relatively silent as they drove on. Weiss had given up on the radio some time ago and they were sitting in relative silence. One thing she noticed she missed was the constant hum of some sort of music. She couldn't remember the last time she had heard music, and she missed it. It was an yet another insignificant thing that she had taken advantage of before.

Yang tapped some beat absent-mindedly at the steering wheel, eyes constantly scanning for threats or points of interest. She was always mindful to drive slow, thinking that it was the best way to conserve the most gas. Ruby was busy playing with a screwdriver, twirling the tool in her hand and poking her nails into the rubber on the handle. She made small x’s which were gone almost as quick as she made them, making for mediocre entertainment at best. But it was still interesting regardless.

The sun was starting to duck lower, pulling away most of the day’s light. Viewing this ruined world from inside a car was strange, as if their vehicle proved to be a dwelling removed from all else. Weiss could close her eyes and imagine that it was just a simple car ride home after school, and it could have been real for a few fleeting seconds had it not been for the staleness in the air and the constant smell of something burning.

Weiss adverted her eyes forward, expecting to see nothing but the same dreary scene, but she couldn’t be more wrong in that moment. "H-hey! Look!" she blurted, shooting to the edge of her seat to almost press her forehead against the windshield, blinking her long lashes multiple times as if to try erasing an illusion. "Is it raining?!"

"What? No?" Yang looked ahead, catching what it was that caught Weiss's attention. "Oh… shit!"

Ruby perked up from the back seat, nearly jumping and hitting the ceiling in her excitement. "Huh!? What is it? What? What?! What's going on?! Rain? It hasn't been cloudy! But then again, I've seen it rain without clouds before. It's kinda weird, huh? But it wouldn't be this heavy!"

"That's not rain," Yang said after inspecting it for a little longer. "Though it's the closest thing to it, probably?"

"What!?" Ruby went to press her face to the window, fogging it up and affectively not able to see anything, now.

"Well, are you going to stop the car?!" Weiss nearly shouted, hardly able to sound angry. It sounded more excited instead, her eyes glued on the water as it shot into the air and sprayed its surroundings. This is exactly what they needed! "It looks like a busted fire hydrant!"

Weiss had already thrown the car door open when the wheels came to a complete stop, touching down and rushing towards the scene.

Ruby exited the car a bit after, having been taught better than to exit a moving vehicle, making her way over to be immediately greeted by droplets of water touching her face from the mists. The hydrant accomplished almost a fountain-like behavior, sprouting into the sky and cascading its surroundings in precious clear water. She followed close behind Weiss, stumbling with her bag in her lap as she looked over the scene in awe. 

“Beautiful... oh... OH! WAIT!” Ruby turned on her heels and ran back to the car, pulled out her bag, and fetched her water bottle. Yang was last to join the lot of them, a smile printed on her face. She had a few of their empty water bottles with her, already a few steps ahead of Ruby. "I GOT IT, I GOT IT!" She stumbled over, getting blasted in the face with water as she tried to get into the stream, not thinking first. She was soaked when she dragged herself back to the cover of the car. "AAAH!"

Weiss stood at a safer distance, letting the misty water cascade against her face, not able to remember the last time she felt that. She ignored Ruby, too ecstatic to see water like this that nothing could change her mood right now. 

What had caused this, though? It was a godsend, but Yang couldn't help but keep an observing mind about it. Her smile faded somewhat as she looked to the ground, noticing some track marks that seemed to lead right into the fire hydrant, along with some stray parts that had to have belonged to a car. There were no close vehicles that could claim the debris as their own. What sort of business did parts like that have being around here in any case?

"Weiss! Weiss! It's not a warm bath, but look!" Ruby had managed to find a part of the fountain of water that acted as a tsuedo-shower where the pressure and amount of falling liquid wasn't too overwhelming while the two of them were standing around gawking. "C'mon! Isn't this cool? Get a move on, who knows how much longer it'll do this!"

"What do you expect me to do with that, exactly?" Weiss found herself asking, the thought of straight up god damn stripping in the middle of the street for a shower coming up in her mind. She started to turn red.

Yang laughed weakly, shaking off her thought about something weird going on. It could only be the result of a constant paranoia. She shifted to fill her water bottles by catching a particular focused stream. "You want us to pull the car up so you can hide behind it?" the blonde offered, grinning widely. Weiss took a defensive step back, for some reason covering her chest as if her clothing had fallen off or something.

"That's… barbaric! And will not be necessary!"

Ruby was already half naked and catching her own water by the time Weiss was done complaining about whatever. As of how exactly she got her clothes off so fast, the world may never know. "It's actually really nice! Oh man this is just what I needed." She stood with her head back as the water pattered over her face and sputtered when some got up her nose.

Weiss felt her face light on fire as her attention returned to a Ruby with a lot less clothing on. She couldn't remove her eyes from the younger girl's form, no matter how hard she tried to look away. Something set aflame inside of her and she really wished she could just spontaneously combust and be done with it.

She managed to tear her eyes away to see Yang tossing her own tank top over her head, and Weiss almost lost her footing. Why was everyone getting naked right now!?

"Woah, careful there," Yang warned as she darted out to make sure Weiss didn't tumble over, grabbing her shoulder until she was balanced. "You dunno when we'll have the chance again, so break a leg!"

With that she stripped out of her pants, tossing them to the side and joining Ruby, enthusiastically telling her something about how the water felt nice. Weiss wasn’t listening because she was just staring towards them in horror, conflicted.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Weiss mumbled to herself, rubbing awkwardly at her forearm, a mental debate raging within her.

\---

It felt like she had the burning pain for hours since the gunfire stopped, the smell of burnt rubber and gunpowder in the air. Adam's back was printed into her mind. The disappointment in his eyes still burned into her, the regret and dread knotted so deeply in her chest, she struggled to breathe. Why had this happened? What cruel gods were playing at the end of her destiny, watching her struggle every step and taking sick pleasure in seeing her so distraught and torn?

Blake breathed heavily as she huddled against a low wall, sitting amongst broken glass and blood as the sunlight poured in above her into the destroyed tattoo parlor. Next to her was a body, mangled and full of bullet holes, crouched into a lifeless heap. She had fallen into cover soon enough to avoid any immediate shots to the heart or skull. Her companion wasn't as lucky. It made her sick to look over, the taste of salt on her tongue and a sickly spell clutching her stomach constantly.

Blake gripped her side, pain searing through her and tears burning at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over. She wouldn't cry. There was no point in crying. 

Another car passed by and she thought, for sure, that it was the band of humans in the jeep coming to look for her and finish the job. High-pitched voices and excited notes were the farthest thing she expected to hear. She stood perfectly still, taking slow, ragged breaths as she listened to the water fall and the voices bicker on. 

She could hardly comprehend words, with her fading in and out of consciousness. But all she knew was that she needed to keep still and let her body take its toll, though that was no short challenge for her at that point.

\---

Weiss continued to watch them, realizing with an ever growing jealousy that they were both fulfilling HER wish, and she wasn't! She forced herself to stand a little straighter, though their attention still wasn't on her. Her resolve doubled, and she picked her chin up, letting out a short breath through her nose. Just think of it like it's changing out in the locker rooms, or something, she told herself. All schools used facilities like that to change into attire more formatted for class and sports. She had done it in the past, and this shouldn’t be any different!  
Her brow knitted and she returned to her usual poise, a frown fixed on her face as her hands flew to the buttons of her blouse, undoing them in a smooth motion. She rested the article of clothing on the nearest elevated surface and set to undo her skirt as well, stepping out of it and doing the same.

Ruby spent most of her time brushing her fingers through her hair and humming as she twirled in the spray, the coolness of the water so very welcome after days of being cramped up in an SUV. A bit of water got in her eyes and she went to wipe it away, not realizing she was standing just before Weiss a few—Weiss? 

Defiantly the white-haired girl walked up to the sprinkling water, paying the both of them no mind and even pretending that they weren't there. As far as she was concerned, she was showering at home like she used to. Except in lingerie. And the water wasn't as warm. And she was in the middle of the street. Her face was on fire but she made it a point to keep her eyes closed. The less she saw of their gawking the better.

Ruby opened both eyes and couldn't keep her attention away at the sight of skin and lacy undergarments. Despite the cool spray, Ruby suddenly felt on fire and she turned away nonchalantly, eyes wide and a blush on her entire body. Why in the world would she be wearing something like that? Maybe it didn't surprise her all that much. Maybe. A peak later and it was confirmed that she was very much surprised.  
Ruby stepped out of the water, flushing as her back faced away from the other girls. Geez. What the heck, Weiss.

\---

Blake saw the figure of that little girl, crumpled and wetting the ground with a growing pool of blood. Her faunus ears twitched and she returned to consciousness with a wave of sickness, this time with a realization. Whoever these people were, they needed to get out of here.  
It took all of Blake's remaining willpower to stand. The nausea washed over her, overwhelming her senses as she leaned over to dry heave once, twice, and then finally once more as she emptied the contents of her stomach on the cement. Her vision blurred and flickered as she shakily planted a hand onto the wall next to her.

She peaked down the way, seeing unmistakable figures at least two blocks away with her keen eyesight. Humans. A flash of bitterness came through her. She had to warn them, even if it meant her end. She would rather a quick end to this suffering, anyway. She kept her knife tucked close to her, the length of the blade shimmering with fresh blood as she left the parlor, cautiously looking around before she began to stumble towards them.

\---

Ruby pulled her washed shirt into her head, huffing a sigh in relaxation at the feeling of being clean. The other two had stepped out and Yang had even started to fill their empty petrol jug with water.

"Sooo… were you looking to impress anyone?" Yang ended up asking towards Weiss's direction as she was just about done filling the petrol jug. She had kept most of her snickering to herself during the bathing ritual, as both of their faces were MORE than enough to amuse the blonde. They looked like a bunch of grade school kids blushing over holding hands. Only better, though. The look on Ruby’s face through the whole thing was priceless.

Weiss said nothing, facing away from the rest of them and brushing slowly at her hair with the brush, shifting where she sat with her legs dangling out of the car.

"I mean, you could at least tell me where you got them." It didn’t matter all that much, but Yang loved this teasing opportunity more than anything else in that moment. 

Weiss knew exactly what Yang was talking about, and quite frankly she didn't want to fuel the fire. "When you have them, you feel like wearing them. That's all there is to it," she replied simply, not hearing any more of this discussion. Yang sighed, shrugging and putting the water in the back of the SUV.

As she inspected her long white strands, she was, at the very least, grateful that she had gotten this opportunity. She was as clean as bathing in the street would let her be, so she was satisfied. She looked forward to that night's sleep as a result of it. Nothing beat snuggling up when you were freshly washed. Except maybe a massage. Or a cool beverage on a beach. Or first class on one of her dad's planes. Okay, so maybe there were a lot of things that were a lot better. She inspected the tips of her hair, eventually lifting her nails up to survey those as well.

With a stretch, Ruby looked between Yang and Weiss as she sat in the sidewalk, waiting for her socks to dry quietly, amused at the two's interactions. If anything, it seemed like the two knew each other forever with the way they bickered. It was a comforting feeling. It was the familiarity of companionship in the pre-destruction that Ruby had missed and the two did well in recreating it. 

Yang felt a certain proudness as she tapped the bumper of the car and looked on towards the rest of her group, knowing she wouldn't have it any other way. Who else to travel with than these two? Sure, Weiss was a handful at times, but she kept them on their toes, which was pleasant.

Ruby saw something move at the corner of her eye and turned, failing to register what exactly it was in one single take. She stood abruptly, surprise evident on her features. "Y-Yang?" She called over, panic pitching her voice upwards.

Her train of thought was interrupted, and Yang's alertness shot up tenfold, her lilac eyes darting to their new company, assuming an offensive fighting pose involuntarily and her smile all but gone.

Their eyes never left Blake as she fell onto her knees, blissfully close enough to finally rest where she was as she lowered herself to lean her back against a nearby car, legs refusing to cooperate further. Weiss shot upright as well, her grip tightening on the brush and gasping sharply.  
"Get... get out of—" Blake struggled to keep her tone sharp past the stabbing pain at her side. "—g-go, quick. You have to leave..."

Upon further inspection of the figure though, Yang noticed that she hardly seemed able to fight. Her choked warning only proved to puzzle her, her words not entirely reassuring. 

"That's... she's a faunus!" Weiss pointed out, having taken a step back herself, eyes wide and the surprise evident in her voice. She thought that if she had a sword, she would be feeling a lot safer right about then.

Blake looked over the three of them with hard amber eyes, every breath painful and her hand cramping from holding it so tightly to the gunshot wound at her side. Ruby didn't spend any longer at a distance as she hurried over, Blake immediately tensing up and gripping her knife in her other hand. The younger girl hadn't seemed to notice as she inspected the faunus's wounds. 

"H-hey, she's hurt bad! There's a lot of blood!" Ruby called back to the other two and went to offer Blake her water bottle. "Here, you need this! Try not to move, we have some stuff that can help!" 

Blake stared at her, a hint of uncertainty flashing through her hard gaze. She slowly went to let go of her wounded side, turning her White Fang armband away and pulling it off of her arm to press it logo-down into the blood. Never letting go of her knife, she reached for the water bottle and drank generously from it after a sniff.

Weiss had caught that unmistakable red sigil long before the faunus girl even had a chance to remove it. It caused her to freeze, a sudden dread overcoming her, more troubled thoughts flowing into her mind than she would have liked. 

There was definitely a lot of blood, and Yang found herself temporarily at a loss with how to help this stranger. She jumped into the back of the vehicle, her initial shock gone and shifting quickly through her things to find all of the first aid supplies she could muster up. "What kind of wound is it?!" she called back, finding gauze and bandages and more.

Ruby had tried inspecting it herself, but a sense of instinct kept her from getting close and checking it out more vividly. Her brows were furrowed in worry as Blake handed her back an empty water bottle, the faunus panting from the lack of air as she downed the whole thing.  
"Gun shot. I think the bullet went straight through," Blake said in a raspy voice, low enough to where Ruby had to repeat the message to her sister in the car. Blake looked to the last girl, frozen and standing with a look of shock. An unintentional glare returned Weiss's blue eyes. Blake shifted uncomfortably where she sat, breaking the eye contact with a grunt of pain as she dropped her knife and went to press both hands onto the wound. She didn't know how she would move her hands when they wanted to look at it. She was still scared out of her mind, and quite frankly, they still needed to get out of here.

"Look, I'm going to bleed out pretty soon. Don't waste anything on me, you three need to get out of here... it's not safe," she murmured, but Ruby ignored her as Yang came along with the supplies and she backed up to give her sister room.

So many different possibilities came up in her mind, all of them with it ending in their untimely ends. Weiss had to say something before they were ambushed or trapped. "She's right! I-it's not safe here! We have to move before it's too late!" Move without her was what she wanted to say, but she didn't dare mention it. Ruby and Yang were ready to throw their supplies down the drain for someone who wanted humans dead, and none of this was going the way it should. 

"If what you're saying's true," Yang started with an even voice, even though her shaking hands did not reflect the solidarity in her voice, "then we have to move and get you out of here." She took out extra clothes to help press down on the wounds, at least trying to stop the blood flow. Entire city blood banks went empty when someone with a gunshot wound came into the emergency room, and quite frankly, with none of that expertise to help her, Yang was running low on options. But she had an idea. One that wasn't going to be pretty.

"Weiss, you're driving," Yang declared as she kneeled to loop Blake's arm around her neck. "Ruby, grab the rest of this stuff.”

Ruby nodded, trusting Yang with her decision without any question. Weiss opened her mouth to protest, but there was such resolve in Yang's eyes that she found her words dying in her throat. There would be no persuading her friends, whether she liked it or not.

Without so much as another word, Yang put her other arm under her legs and lifted her from the ground, grunting as she did so. Blake was unable to fight the blonde, eyes focusing on her knife and a beat of panic flashing through her as her weight disappeared from underneath her. She felt hot liquid seer from the exit wound on her back as she was picked up and she struggled to keep her breathing regular through the pain. "What are—s-stop!—why—" Words failed her as she tightened her arm around Yang's shoulders, other hand cupped over her wound. She looked down to her legs, vision blurry as her head lulled and her world spun at the quick change in position.

Ruby gathered the materials, a look of concentration on her face as she hurried to the car, making sure to dump the materials in the back and jumping quickly into the driver's seat to start the car and tuck away the wires. They were really low on gas and she only hoped that what Yang had planned was quick and close. Weiss conceded in doing what she was told, not leaving out a massive amount of frustration in all of her movements. She switched places with Ruby quickly to take the driver’s seat.

Ruby jumped into the back, pushing open the door and going to lay down the chairs to match their sleeping arrangement. A blanket was tossed down and there was now sufficient room to accompany the three of them in the back for this operation. Yang closed the back behind her when she laid Blake down as gently as she could, letting Weiss know that they were ready to go. 

"But where to?" Weiss questioned, not causing Yang to look up. 

"Anywhere that's not here!" she called, trying to inspect Blake's wound. It wasn't successful through all of the blood and cloth, so Yang decided to rip away the torn clothing. The white turtleneck was as good as ruined anyway. Yang made sure to help Blake out of her (thankfully empty) gun holster strapped to her chest and her black vest. "Ruby, get my knife and lighter, quick," she told her without skipping a beat, hoping that this would work.

Blake was so disoriented that the sudden walls around her struck panic into her, but she had no energy left within her to thrash and fight. Consciousness waned and the world continued to spin. She felt sick. Cold and nauseous. Scared. Black specs covered her vision and she comprehended very little of the world around her. She fought to stay awake, knowing that if she allowed sleep to come over her, she might not wake up. It was hard. One of the hardest things she had ever done. 

Ruby obliged quickly with Yang's orders, hands shaking as she took out the sheathed knife and reached for the lighter. She already knew what Yang was going to do. She looked with worry down at Blake as she pulled out the knife and handed it to her sister along with the lighter. Ruby took the liberties of pouring water onto the wound to make the wound more visible. "Before you do it, we should clean it," she said with a cautiously steady voice. She reached for the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. "Heat it up, I'll do it." 

Yang reassured herself that there was no other way, that if she didn't stop the bleeding now, it may be too late. It was the only thing they could do. "Good call. You do that, both sides," she instructed. Weiss attempted to look in the rear view mirror, trying to adjust it so she could see what was going on. What had they unfolded accepting this faunus into their lives?

Yang lit the lighter and kept her thumb down on it, warming up the blade the best she could. It was good they hardly used it because it was practically full. Her lilacs never left the small flame. A whole fire would have been a lot better, but this would have to do.

Ruby eyed the now-torn cloth of her undershirt, thinking that they wouldn’t want Blake biting her tongue off. She took a smaller section, bundled it, and beckoned Blake to bite down on it. She looked to Blake's face as if asking her permission for what she was about to do, but she barely looked like she was awake, let alone able to fight the two of them or make any decisions.

She took an edge of the blanket and wiped the water from the front wound, pouring the peroxide carefully over the hole and watching the chemical immediately go to work as it fizzed. Blake made a choked noise in her throat but Ruby knew she had to go on. After letting it sit, she went and wiped the wound clean once again, struggling to find a clean part of the blanket to wipe it down with.

If the bullet really did go straight through without leaving anything behind, she was lucky. But if it had managed to hit vital organs on the way in, then sealing up the holes wouldn't stop internal bleeding. Worry furrowed the youngest girl's brows but she didn't let her worry stop her from trying to save the faunus girl. "Ready on this side."

Weiss's eyes kept shifting to her mirror rather than the road, and she saw what Yang was doing in a flash before she stared back ahead. Weiss would have probably suggested the same thing had she not wanted to get rid of the faunus. 

Yang watched as the blade began to glow hot, swallowing hard. "Alright..." If she waited any longer they would surely lose her, so she strengthened her resolve and killed her flame, hovering the knife over her wound, not sure if her shaking was from herself or the moving vehicle. She held her breath and pressed the flat side down, closing an eye but still watching on.

White hot fire flared throughout her whole body. Blake hissed, not having the energy to cry out as her skin was burned closed, a bloody scab settling over and a pain so unique to the pain she knew before, it was a wonder what else was to come. Tears stung at the corners of her eyes, the smell of burnt flesh quickly filling the car. 

"A little bit at a time, Yang, careful," Ruby warned, her voice serious and even, so uncharacteristic for her that it felt like someone else was speaking.

Yang couldn't reply to her as she kept the blade in place, wondering how long she had to keep it there before she lifted it. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, not wanting to burn any healthy tissue, surely. She tried to not breathe through her nose, lifting the knife when she thought it was good to do so. She had to repeat that a few more times, dabbing and pressing before retreating. 

She inspected her work at the front, her attention trailing up to the nearly unconscious faunus. "Is that enough?" Yang asked before returning to the lighter to ignite it once more. It had looked like the bleeding had stopped, but it was hard to tell with so much red.

Ruby inspected her work, leaning forward and squinting. "That'll do. We're going to wrap it later, but for now we gotta make sure she won’t lose anymore," she said in response, going for the gauze and placing a plentiful amount onto the wound and applying medical tape to keep it in place long enough for her to flip the faunus girl over and repeat the process.

With a bit of trouble, she was on her side and Ruby repeated the cleaning process before nodding towards Yang. "Same thing. She's gonna be okay," she murmured, trying to convince herself at this point.

Yang ran the blade over and over the flame again, wishing for the fire to just be hotter so she could do this quicker. Ruby's cleaning gave her enough time to heat the knife up again, though, and she made sure that the metal glowed just as it did previously before she lowered it once again, not hesitating this time in pressing the hot metal to her skin. The second time around, the stinging sound still made her queasy, but she would put on a strong face and get through it.

A noise of weak protest left Blake and she flinched at the contact before the girl blacked out from the pain. Ruby was somewhat relieved, then, but worried as she went and made sure that she had a pulse. It was weak, extremely so, but for now, she was still alive. The wound sealed up and Ruby watched Yang's work carefully, nodding as she noticed the skin had been burned enough to where she wasn't damaging the healthy tissue to crisps.

"Alright. Help me bandage her and we should try to get her to drink more water." She nodded to Yang as she maneuvered the girl slowly to sit up, her form lax and unconscious, which made it all the more easier, thankfully. Not until they would have to try to get her to drink more.  
Ruby placed gauze onto the back wound, now, and asked Yang to pass her the bandages. Using teamwork, they maneuvered the bandages to wrap around the faunus girl's form and over her shoulder to keep it in place. Ruby admired their work and hoped it was enough. She reached for her water bottle and filled it using the petrol bottle as a source. "She's still out, isn't she?" She inquired towards Yang as she did the cap on her water bottle and crawled over to settle on the opposite side of the girl from Yang.

Yang went and leaned against the side, sighing and finally allowing her heartbeat to settle. As she looked over the mess, it had looked like they had done more bad than good. But as far as she was concerned, she might make it yet. "Wouldn't blame her. She really needs to replenish all of the... er, lost fluid." The place reeked of blood and burned flesh, but she looked to her sister and partner through the ordeal and couldn't be prouder. "Handled like a champ," she commented, the sides of her lips tugging up into a smile. 

Ruby then looked to Yang, flushing at her compliment and allowing a smile of her own. "Thanks, Yang. You too. That took some guts," she returned as she went to lean against the seat behind her. 

In the driver's seat, Weiss was just pulling over and putting the car in park. Heaven forbid she mess with any of those silly wires and try to turn it off. Their current location was a freeway underpass, so maybe that would give them enough invisibility to go unnoticed. Abandoned cars littered the rest of the way to where she couldn't drive any further anyway. 

For now, Ruby was relieved to be far away from whatever danger the faunus was talking about. She wished she knew her name. The younger sister nodded to Yang, looking down at the wounded girl and to her cat ears. She squinted with fascination and got a closer look at them, never really having been up close to a faunus before. There really wasn't a lot of them on their side of town and she only ever saw them on the news or briefly in public. Her kitty ears were super cute.

The blonde continued to smile at her sister, feeling like she had said all that she needed to, her eyes drawing to the said faunus girl as well. She looked almost too still, and it caused Yang's smile to fade somewhat. If she didn't make it out alright, the older sibling would surely blame herself. 

"Are you quite done?" Weiss questioned from the safety of the driver's seat, having turned around to leer over the headrest. 

"She's got cute ears," Yang stated, her smile returning, though her positivity didn't thwart Weiss. She reached out a hand before she thought about it and touched at her ear, surprised at how soft it was. She had seen some faunus in passing and at her college, but not nearly as close as this.

"They are really really cute..." Ruby agreed, eyes widening in surprise as Yang went that extra leap. She kinda wanted to, as well, but she was a person, not a pet!

"Perfectly adorable. For a murderous rabid animal! We have to leave her before she wakes up!"

Her gray eyes went to tilt back to look up at Weiss and she began to feel defensive for the girl she hoped she had saved. "Hey! Weiss, that's so rude! You don't know anything about her! There you go with assuming again! She's hurt and needs our help!"

"Who said I was assuming?" she shot icily, climbing over the seat and grabbing a hold of the bloody arm band that had previously been tossed to the side. "Or have you forgotten what THIS is?!"

Yang was ready to jump to the defense as well, but her heart sank when she studied the red wolf. Covered in the blood, but a red wolf nonetheless. "No way..." she uttered breathlessly. What had they gotten themselves into exactly?

Weiss tossed it down, putting her hand on her hip. "Precisely. She's White Fang, and she'll slit our throats in our sleep if she gets the chance!"  
Ruby parted her lips to combat words with words, but Weiss had a point when she noticed the arm band, her words halting. She looked to the symbol and couldn't help but to think of the attacks, the threats, the bombing. Uncertainty clouded her mind as she looked between the arm band and the unconscious girl. "W-well, still, we can't leave her! She tried to save us by telling us to get out of there... she can't be all that bad." At this point, Ruby was once again trying to convince herself of her own argument.

"What if she was leading us into a trap? What if we were followed here?!"

Yang tried to think of an answer, but for once the hotheaded girl was right, completely right. They had no idea what kind of things the White Fang members were capable of, and quite frankly, they weren't in a position to find out.

"It would do us all good to leave her and keep moving! She's already taken most of our medical supplies, and we can't afford to feed an extra person right now." The odds really were stacking in Weiss's favor, but it went against Yang's moral intuitions. 

"She'll be too weak to fight if she wakes up. We can take turns watching her and make sure she doesn't try anything." Yang looked between the both of them before settling on the faunus again. "Ruby could be right. She was trying to warn us, not attack us. Maybe we should hear what she has to say."

Of course, Ruby found herself agreeing with Yang. "Yeah! We have to give her a chance, Weiss. It's the right thing to do, even if she is plotting something, which I doubt, in her condition! Just look at her!" She motioned to Blake, barely breathing and pale from her blood loss. "Please, just give her a chance. Maybe she... knows about what's going on," she choked up on her words, trying to fit the unconscious girl in the puzzle piece that was the destruction of everything she knew.

Weiss glared at the both of them, her resolve seemingly unshaken. There was a moment of silence filled with tension, and for a moment Yang thought she was going to force them to abandon her. Finally the white-haired girl sighed, plopping down where she was and bringing her legs to her chest. "Okay, we'll see. Maybe she knows where we can get more supplies."

Yang did a little cheer in gratitude, though Weiss cut it short by pointing a menacing finger at her. "However, it'll be on the both of YOU if this leads to something worse! I won't say I didn't tell you so if she does turn around and stab us in the back." 

Her finger darted between the both of them a few times, and Yang smiled and nodded, not phased by it. “Sounds like a plan!”

"Yeah yeah, we're responsible, okay," Ruby said quickly and dismissively, excited to have the semi-acceptance of Weiss, taking it for what it was. She looked down to Blake, smiling wide. "We're gonna take good care of you and protect you from Weiss!”

"I'm right here," the girl mumbled under her breath, rolling her eyes and turning to look at what was in their food compartment. Dangerously low. 

“Man, I wish we knew her name... should we give her a nickname?" Ruby continued.

Once again, Weiss had something to say under her breath. "Don't name her, or else you'll get attached to her."

Yang hummed in thought, ignoring Weiss's rude comments and juggling ideas in her mind. "Hooooow 'bout… Binx! Like that guy who got turned into a cat from that one Halloween movie."

Weiss groaned loudly.

"THAT'S SO CUTE! I love Binx! Oh geez what a great movie. I really wanna see that movie right now. Have you seen it Weiss? Please tell me you've seen Hocus Pocus please. Even I've seen it and I've seen like three movies.”

Weiss turned sharply to the lot of them, sighing heavily before shooting a very heavy "no" in Ruby's direction. Though she did have the thought that it would have been nice to watch a movie again, her previous hard demeanor melting away somewhat. Keyword somewhat.  
"What?! You haven't?!" Ruby shot towards Weiss. What kind of a childhood did she live? That was just too sad for words. She hoped that she could show her it one day. “Binx though! Really cute! Binky Binx!" Ruby smiled down at Blake, satisfied with the choice. "I wonder if she's seen it. Do you think she'll recognize it?" Ruby crawled to sit closer to the girl's side, water bottle in hand. "Binx... let's try and get her to drink some more water, okay, Yang? Can you sit her up for me? Carefully."

Yang shifted back over, having fully collected herself now. "You got it." With that, she put her arm around her shoulders and lifted her as carefully as she could manage, resting her head against her chest. She stuck her leg out to separate Blake and the floor of the car, getting comfortable. She might be like this for a moment or two.

"Oh! That movie, Weiss! It's about a group of kids who accidentally wake up three real life witches who've been asleep for like hundreds of years during Halloween and the witches try to eat little children's souls or something. And yeah there's a talking cat! He's actually a person but he was cursed and he's stuck in the cat's body." She explained all of this while getting real close to Blake, the faunus making no means to wake up. Ruby checked her pulse and her breathing, faint but steady. She raised the bottle to her lips, maneuvering it with some difficulty.  
"Wish we could give her an IV or something," Yang commented mostly to herself.

"Yeah, an IV would be really nice. Gonna have to make due, though. She's still breathing, so that's good." She commented as she poured a small amount of water into her mouth when she was positive it wasn't going to drip and tilted her head back, slowly. With a bit of a struggle, she finally got her to swallow. It would take so long this way, but every little bit counted.

Weiss turned to watch, wanting to say something about how they shouldn't be so quick to give everything they owned away, but it would have been useless. Instead she watched on, always frowning. "Yeah, never heard of a movie like that."

Yang studied her sister's movements, and whatever she was doing seemed to be working. She was grateful, and she found herself admiring Ruby even more. There was a certain gentleness in her actions, and the blonde had the thought that she would have made a really good doctor or nurse. If she was interested in that.

"It's a really good movie," Ruby responded a couple minutes after Weiss's words, too focused on the task at hand. Once Ruby was sure she had sufficiently given the faunus enough water, she nodded towards Yang and sat back, huffing a sigh and realizing how exhausted she was. "Now if only we can get her to eat something, but that's going to have to wait. It could be a while before she wakes up, but if we keep giving her water, she should be fine."

"Beggars can't be choosers," Yang shrugged, readjusting so that she could lay Blake back down onto the blankets. Which were practically ruined with blood, now. They really needed to go hunting for some fresh ones. It would be unwise to use their water to wash them.  
"Corpses can't either," Weiss mumbled, leaning against the car door and resting her head on the thin padding.

Ruby shot a glance at Weiss, brows furrowed at that. She didn't comment. It would only fuel the fire. She got up, crouching, and hopped into the front seat, pulling out the red wires that powered the car and twisting them apart. The vehicle powered down to a silence so vivid, even the faintness of Blake's breath was overpowering. Ruby sighed and stared ahead at the leagues of abandoned cars. 

Their car was understandably out of place. Most of the ones on the road were burned to a crisp and had most definitely seen some sort of explosion. Another story here that she would never get the chance to learn about. They hadn't tried in a while, so she figured powering the car's battery back on and trying the radio would be a good thing to do.

An icon next to the speedometer blinked, signaling that the battery was low. She had no idea how much longer it would last. But she hoped it didn't fail them when they needed it most. 

Ruby turned the radio up and filed through the white noise, cheek leaning against the steering wheel as she searched.

This time Weiss didn't bother to offer her assistance, instead remaining where she was and allowing her eyes to slide shut. Yang rested her cheek on a knee, tapping her fingers on her boot and watching the sleeping form of Blake.


	5. End of the Road, Black Cat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wednesday is here! Enjoy!

Incomprehensible voices filled her sleep. Dreary, sickly images of the attack played over and over again in her head. She was so tired. She just wanted rest, but there was no such thing. In her sleep, she was pushing carts. Pushing carts and cutting her hands and too exhausted to keep moving for long. Too exhausted to keep working. Every time she rested, she felt a stabbing pain in her side. Ducking away from bullets. The thud of bodies hitting the floor, from overwork or gunshots, it was indistinguishable. There was no relief.

Blake woke up in a sweat, dizzy and feeling disastrously weak. Pain pulsed at her wound, a dull ache. For what brief consciousness she had, an unfamiliar face was upon her quickly and her wounds protested in white-hot pain as she was levied to sit up gently. She felt some lukewarm liquid pass through her lips and down her throat. Her jaw was sore and the heat was unbearable. She waned away, once again, into a restless sleep.

The faunus struggled to toss and turn without hurting herself. With any sense of slight, sleepless movement, she was hardly alert and nauseous. It was like every moment she parted her eyes and tried to gauge her surroundings, she lost more of a grip of the reality around her as her vision crawled with shadowy figures. She was so feverish and sickly, it felt as though she was being drained of life the more she woke. The only mercy that came upon her was the passing of water through her lips.

Her sleep became marginally more peaceful as cool cloths wrapped around her arms, head, neck, everywhere. She felt weighed down by them, less like floating away and turning in her sleep to escape from tseudo-consciousness. She blacked out for a blissful while, feeling her body begin to replenish itself from pure exhaustion as she actually received solid rest.

Blake's eyes parted slowly, reality about her suddenly thick and comprehensible, the sensation strange after what felt like weeks of sleepy hallucinations treading across her vision. She looked for a long moment at her surroundings. The interior of a car, a disorientingly unbeknownst place. Deposited bandages, rough blankets, a sheathed knife, rags, more medical supplies, and a water bottle. She sat up slowly, huffing from the effort, her whole body trembling. She was in what must have remained of her clothes, her white turtleneck torn into scraps and her under armor just as compromised. She had bandages wrapped around her and she recalled the gunshot wound. Who did this?

The sun outside was far past setting, the sky a dull, receding blue. It was dark inside the car, placed below the shade of a parking garage. There was no stunt on her sense of vision, finally, but everything still spun and shook. No one was around, though she could tell the space was recently inhabited. There were people with her. She couldn't remember much of what happened before she got here. How long had she been out for?

She fixed her eyes on the water bottle near her again and noticed how parched she was. The thing was half full and lukewarm but a godsend, nonetheless. She looked around uneasily, panting as she caught her breath from downing the bottle's contents. She was somewhere on the third or fourth floor of a parking garage, somewhere she didn't recognize. The buildings outside were barren skeletons of what they once were. Even parts of the ceiling in the structure she occupied was crumbling, letting in the fading glimmer of the setting sun. Even that little sliver of light was an assault on her eyes.

She moved to dangle her legs out of the car, faunus ears perked. Blake was too weak to stand, but she willed herself to try anyway, falling to her knees and using the car as leverage to keep herself from falling flat on the floor. She looked back to inspect the vehicle. A black van. Footsteps sounded from what was probably the stairwell and a hint of uncertainty and panic played through her. What could she do? She attempted to lug herself back into the vehicle to reach for the knife, but her strength failed her. She found herself collapsed on the floor, panting and exhausted from the small feat.

Whistling began echoing on the several stories of the parking garage. When Yang climbed the last of the stairs, a certain jump in her step, her eyes drew to their "new" car, her smile dropping at what she saw. She was awake! And trying to escape or something.

"H-hey!" Yang called, rushing over. She stopped a few feet shy of her out of caution, Weiss's accusations coming up in her mind. "You should really take it easy! You've been out for days."

Blake rolled her head up to glare at the blonde, panting and a look of heightened awareness about her as she went to pull her legs close and slowly—hesitantly—shuffling away on the cement. It didn't help to create any distance between them at all. Had she been in an actual, solid functioning state of mind, she probably would have kept up some sort of front and stood her ground. She seemed plain confused and unsure of the situation, vulnerable like some caged animal. "Days? Where am I?" Her voice was raw with lack of use and she clutched onto the bandages of her wound, fingers tracing the place where the bullet had entered. It was thick with padding.

The blonde sighed, glad that she was at least willing to talk. It was strange actually seeing her conscious. On more than a couple occasions, Yang had thought about what she'd say to her. She wanted to figure out what kind of person she was and what kinds of things she knew, amongst many things. Somehow, all that thinking went down the drain when she was actually faced with the real thing. "Uhh... welp, a parking garage. It's good to see ya up and about! You're probably starving. Care for a bite?" she asked, approaching the back side door and pulling it open.

Watching her carefully, Blake didn't try to respond, feeling starved out of her mind, but not wanting to give into giving the blonde the satisfaction of a straight answer. She seemed amazingly cheer-y. The faunus couldn't help but to feel suspicious. She stayed where she sat, unable to maneuver herself efficiently or silently enough to try to pull something. The thought of food was so welcomed and Blake wondered what she possibly could have.

Yang noticed quickly that the faunus girl wasn't particularly talkative, but that wouldn't sway her. She picked out a can of beans from their food compartment, which had seen shortages and abundances of supplies over the past couple of days. Right now, it was a bit low, but a can of beans should have been suitable enough for her. Plus, there was a lot of protein and stuff in them.

Yang fished out her can opener, climbing towards the back and jumping out of the car. "Hey so, how're ya feelin'?" she began, placing her stuff near the bumper and taking a seat. For a moment she considered offering the girl a hand in sitting back up, but something told her she would retreat from her if she tried. Kind of like a cat who didn't want to be touched.

Blake's sharp amber eyes turned to look up at the blonde, brows furrowed and a hard expression on her face. She looked back and forth between the can and her face, clenching at her wound and running a finger over the thick padding of the gauze over and over. "Not dead," she answered quietly as she watched Yang open the can, the smell immediately hitting her nose and causing her mouth to water. Her faunus ears perked and twitched with every slight sound of the metal of the can.

"You're not," Yang chimed in confirmation, giving her a sideways grin and handing the can down to her. "I could warm it up for ya, but somethin' tells me you don't really care about that right now."

She reached for the can almost too quickly, ignoring her comment. She was absolutely right. The can went straight to her lips, as she knocked back its contents, unknowing to just how deliciously rewarding a cold can of beans could be until that moment. She was ravenous, the contents of the can nearly entirely devoured in what was about a minute flat.

Yang's brows furrowed and she continued to smile, putting her hands behind her and leaning back, even kicking her feet a little. "You... lost quite a bit of blood. We changed your bandages three times. Oh! And Ruby took a lot of time to make sure you got enough water. Kid's got a natural talent for this stuff." She was mostly talking to herself, but getting the girl to talk would be a feat in its own. "Got a name? 'Cause, I mean, we've been callin ya Binx. You know! Like the guy from that... one movie." Yeah, Ruby explained the basic plot of that film a lot better than she just did.

Blake took her sweet time replying, not sure what exactly it was that the blonde hoped to get out of talking to her. She wiped her mouth slowly, eyes settled elsewhere as she contemplated the other's words with a dangerously apparent disinterest. She had never heard of any guy from a movie called Binx. "It's Blake," she murmured, at least correcting that much.

"Blake, huh?" She tried the name on her tongue, knowing that her real name was hell of a lot more suiting than the one she came up with. "That's... what I was gonna call you second!" she smiled wider, trying to get a laugh or a smile out of her or something. "But, heh, yeah. I'm Yang."

"Why did you save me?" Blake's inquiry came suddenly, almost cutting into Yang's own introduction by a second. It was the most logical thing to ask and what she was most curious about. It was hard to believe any humans would go out of their way for her without any selfish gains.

The blonde hummed in thought, thinking about how Weiss didn't want them to save her. It was probably best she didn't know about that entire ordeal. "Well, you were hurt, sooo... we helped you out. That's all there is to it, really. Couldn't leave you on the street..."

Blake couldn't help but to feel like she was almost immediately warming up to the girl. She had a certain spark about her that was hard to continue to be cold to. Yang. The girl was Yang. "Couldn't leave me in the street? What do you think happened before you came along?" she muttered, no hostility in her voice. She was tired, if anything. She turned the can in her grasp, not meaning for the question to be answered. "I... I appreciate it. But, there's only trouble in bringing me along with you. My kind aren't exactly the most accepted right now."

The corner's of Yang's mouth hesitated away from her smile, wanting to know more than anything what this girl's story was. How did someone like her get into something like the White Fang? She seemed well-mannered enough. Her smile returned as a more reassuring gesture now, shrugging. "Doesn't matter to us. We're just a band of gals searching for new purposes, 'cause we've got nothing else but one another."

The faunus paused, shaking her head and crossing her arms loosely over her knees as her posture continued to deflate into pure exhaustion. She pressed her face into her arm with a sigh. "You don't understand," she began, voice muffled, unsure of where to even start. She simply left it at that, shoulders sagging as she pressed her face hard to her skin, wanting nothing more than to disappear at that moment.

"Yeah, well, ever since this all started, the three of us have been in the dark about a lot of things..." Yang pinched her shoulders together, orienting herself from her seated position to angle towards Blake, bringing her leg up to hug to her chest. "But fill me and the rest of us in later. I'm sure we'd all like to hear what you've gotta say about all this. I mean, you probably know a hell of a lot more than all of us combined."

Blake pulled her face from her arm, amber eyes slowly sliding up to meet Yang's lilacs as she paused, taking in her words for what they were. It was subtle, so very subtle, but she already knew. All of them already knew, whoever "all" of them were. "You saw my arm band," she noted aloud in a deadpan. "I really don't understand why you're keeping me around."

"Okay, yeah, we did... but that doesn't matter! You needed help, so we did just that." She didn't understand why that was so difficult to comprehend. Couldn't they help someone who needed it, regardless of their background? It mattered little to her.

The faunus fell into another pit of silence, eyes dropping to the smooth cement beneath. She shuffled to attempt to stand, grabbing onto the car to help lift herself up. Yang ducked after throwing her leg down quickly to help, knowing that if she worked too hard she would surely open her wounds again. The dull ache at Blake's abdomen and lower back reminded her of how delicate she was right now. She wanted to see what it looked like, but at least it didn't feel like the scorching pain she remember it as.

When Blake came to a sit on the bumper, Yang was exceptionally lagging in removing her hand from the girl's waste. The gesture was more like making sure she was supported enough for her to safely move away than anything. Blake was silently thankful for the help, a brief thought occurring to her. Was it Yang that had been carrying her around?

Yang pulled away and grabbed a water bottle from behind her. "Thirsty?"

Blake glanced to Yang, looking down to the water bottle and silently receiving it. She shakily parted the cap and drank, stubbornly bringing her eyes anywhere but to her company. "Where are you headed?" she found herself asking softly.

Yang hummed in thought, knowing how to relatively answer the question. "Well, we kinda have a bit of a system goin' on. We... well, we're almost out of food again, so that's what Weiss and Ruby are out doing. But in long term goals, I guess Weiss got what she wanted. She was talking about acquiring a nice sword next because she was all about that. Which I totally didn't know. I'm still on the lookout for a punching bag, and we're slowly collecting wood for Ruby's wish to build a fire..." She trailed off, watching the faunus for a moment before her smile returned. "Just small stuff, and when we accomplish our little wishes, we just make more. It's how we've decided to keep going and keep purpose in our steps."

Blake listened carefully, brows furrowing at how minute the wishes were. She doubted that they could provide her with the means for her own desire. It was impossible to rejoin her brothers and sisters of the White Fang, if they weren't already dead. There was no hope left for her kind and no one knew the wrongs that had been done. She sat in her growing anger, hating how easy it was for them to win. There was no purpose for her, now.

She was useless here, injured and unreliable. Every breath she took was a stolen given from some other faunus who needed it so much more. What she would give to be trekking now, pulling her own weight with a sense of purpose. Now, a panging emptiness filled her. A deep, rooting sense of dread filled her at the constant reminders of her failure. How one little step could have saved woman next to her or how if she had just moved a little faster out of the spray of fire, she would still be with Adam and the others. It was so indiscriminately cruel to wake up and realize that she had nothing to live for once again when she had been doing just that nearly all her life.

"I want to die," she said evenly, serious. That was all that was left for her now. This world would be cruel until the very last moment, but while she had the chance, she would choose how she ended it.

With her optimistic outlook on the entire situation, it was hard for Yang to hear someone who didn't believe in something better. She wanted to ask what she had been through to say that, but it wasn't her place. Could she inspire her to move forward just as Weiss did before?

"H-hey, wait a moment there," Yang started, her eyes drawing to her covered wounds. "That's not the thing you wanna hear when you spend a week looking after someone. We didn't give up on you, not for one second!"

Blake gave Yang a begrudging look, hesitation pausing her words. She sighed in frustration, shaking her head idly. If anything, turning the blonde against her would make this that much easier. "I've killed people. Humans," she murmured, far from proud about the fact, but left out the notion of her self-defense.

Yang mirrored the faunus's sigh, though it wasn't nearly as frustrated. "And how many times was that just out of spite? For the hell of it, or for fun?" She wasn't a complete stranger to the fighting between the faunus and the humans and she might not have known much about it at all, but she did know about the discrimination. Yang had no loyalty to either side. Why would she anyway? It wasn't a conflict she was particularly fond of or involved in.

Blake didn't answer her question right away, staring at the girl with a certain intensity that couldn't be matched. For a long moment, she remained silent, wondering if she could possibly make a friend out of Yang. She seemed trustable enough. She wanted to trust her, anyway. She hoped the sentiment wasn't the wrong one. "Never for fun. Or for the hell of it," she returned, eyes curiously looking over the other as if trying to read her there and then.

She matched Blake's intensity with an adamant determination. It was as if she didn't believe she was telling the truth. Why should she anyway? Her distrust wasn't unwarranted for, but it only made Yang want to prove her wrong. Not all humans are bad; their small group was surely living proof of that. "Look, I'm not cheering on any White Fang guys or even the government policies or whatever. I just want to look after my sister."

Blake turned suddenly, eyes searching the parameter as she listened. A beat passed. Yang was confused as Blake's attention focused on something unseen, looking about with concern. There was silence to Yang, but to the faunus, there were footsteps. "They're back? Two are with you?" She made sure, a hint of uneasiness as she tried to identify the footsteps.

It didn't take the faunus many words until Yang understood, a smile coming to her face. She noted that her hearing was really, REALLY good. "Oh, yeah! That has to be Ruby and Weiss. I wonder if they found anything worthwhile."

Blake then remembered those shocked blue eyes standing in the middle of the street. The disgust. The conversations escaped her. She wished she could remembered what exactly it was that happened before she went out. All she remembered was the impossibly horrendous pain from her gunshot wound.

Sure enough, Weiss and Ruby surfaced from the opposite end of the parking garage from the stairway. Ruby sported her backpack and talked animatedly to Weiss, loud and excited over whatever it was she was spouting about.

The faunus suddenly reverted back to her initial nervous attitude, having barely gotten used to Yang, if what their conversation instilled could be called that. She didn't know what she was going to say. She didn't know what they were going to ask or how she was going to handle the two. She retreated into the van slowly, her eyes downcast as she tried to hide herself from their immediate view.

With furrowed brows, the blonde made no protest to get the faunus girl to greet the other two. Yang tried not to be bothered too much by Blake's unwillingness, but it was somewhat warranted. She put on a smile, though their conversation still lingered in the back of her mind, and hopped up to go greet them. "Heya!" She waved enthusiastically towards them, approaching the two with a growing curiosity. Yang couldn't quite say why but she enjoyed seeing the two of them get along. There was just a real sense of companionship amongst their group now, much different from when they first met Weiss. "Well, how'd it go?"

Said white-haired girl (who was actually wearing a back pack this time around) looked the blonde up and down before shrugging. "We found a liquor store or something. The bigger building next to it basically fell over it and crushed most of it in, but we were able to get a lot from there."

"INCLUDING..." Ruby sounded in a loud voice as she reached into her pocket and fiddled around with it before surfacing something. "BUBBLE GUM!"

Yang gasped at the treat, doing a little cheer. If there was anything she loved, it was popping gum. While revving her bike. With her one hundred twenty dollar shades. Those were the days.

Ruby waved the package in Yang's face, excited for the discovery, face beaming and an excited note leaving her as she withdrew it and went to toss her bag onto the bunker of the car. "How's Binx doin'? She really needs to up and—HOLY CRAP YANG!" Ruby jumped, pointing at Blake as her amber eyes watched her uneasily. "SHE'S UP!"

"Huh? Oh, yeah! I know!" Yang turned took towards the car, smiling widely. "Her name's Blake, and..." She hushed her voice a little bit, even though it was practically useless. She had learned not long ago exactly how good the faunus's hearing was. "She's... quiet. So make her feel welcomed!"

Weiss furrowed her brows at the blonde, icy eyes trailing past her to hold the eye contact of the girl looking like she had been backed into a corner. "She couldn't come greet us herself?" she asked skeptically, crossing her arms.

Blake watched the interactions unfold, mentally noting everything she needed to know about the three. Yang and Ruby were pretty self-explanatory. They must have been the sisters. But the other one. Weiss, was it? Blake found herself peering at the other, brows furrowed as she clenched onto her side and watched the white-haired girl shoot her something akin to daggers. "Sorry I'm not too excited about meeting the lot of you. I was just shot and almost died," she said in a heated tone.

"WEISS! Be nice!" For a second, Ruby snickered, murmuring about how that rhymed.

Weiss huffed but otherwise said nothing, leaving the group to their own devices to go put away what she had in her backpack, her strut dignified and her chin up.

Ruby waved and leaned past Yang, smiling grandly. "Hi! Blake? Aww! I'm gonna miss calling you Binx. I'm Ruby! How're ya feelin'? Want some bubblegum?!"

Yang smiled sheepishly, clapping her gloved hands together and rubbing lightly. "Weeelp... I would like some if she doesn't!"

Blake continued to observe on in silence as Ruby pulled out a stick and handed it to Yang. The smaller girl pulled her weight onto the bumper and started crawling towards her, much to her surprise. She stiffened and stared for a second at the stick of gum offered to her and hesitantly took it with a small "thank you", which Ruby replied with a giant smile.

"Gum makes everything one hundred and ten times better!" Ruby sat cross legged near Blake, pulling out a piece of her own and stuffing it into her mouth. "Wan'shome, Weiss?" With a full mouth, she waved the package in the girl's direction and Blake made a coughing noise that was supposed to be a laugh. What a kid.

It was hard to keep her attention on her unpacking with Ruby waving a pack of gum in her face. She leaned away a little, sighing heavily and grasping so hard at her bag that her hands shook. "I don't chew gum," she shot, swatting her away and continuing with her task. Ruby deflated a bit as she threw down the gum in front of her and surfaced her bag from her back to have it sit in front of her.

Yang tossed the wrapper and chomped down on the stick, putting her hand on her waist and the other above her on the open lid of the van. She popped the gum as soon as she was able. Blake's ears flickered over to the sudden sound as she fiddled with the wrapping, her eyes catching on Yang. "I need an inventory check, stat," Yang stated, a smile still at her lips.

"Working on it," Weiss mumbled, still pulling things from her bag. Cans, packages of nuts and dried berries, crackers, pretzels... it was a good scavenge.

Blake slid the gum into her mouth as Ruby reached over from her own bag, pulling out some non-perishables, amongst batteries, a package of blow-up balloons, and some small lock pads with keys. "You never know when this stuff will come in handy!" Ruby nodded towards the balloons and inspected the bag, smiling wide as she chewed on her gum, humming happily.

Weiss grunted off-handedly, grinning a little to herself. "Which is another way of saying that it'll never come in handy," she stated with indifference but not with a tone that called for a fight. She started taking out useful things, like tampons and toothpaste.

"This is a great place to be in... remember that dusty ol' block where we only ever picked up wood and a mouthful of dirt?"

"I sure do," Yang recalled, not very fond of the thoughts. "This sure is an improvement, though."

Ruby huffed and took out a balloon. Weiss was gonna be so jealous when she blew one up and was having fun with it while she was being all grouchy and complain-y and not wanting to chew gum. "Yeah, it's exciting! And this place has really good cover. Like, who'd ever think of finding us in a parking garage?"

"It was my idea, though," Weiss added, feeling the need to remind everyone of her importance, her hands falling into her lap. She turned to actually smile at the darker-haired girl, though the gesture was short-lived when that armband's signet resurfaced in her memory.

"Go Weiss," Ruby murmured, taking a deep breath to try and blow up the balloon she had, but the initial burst of air wasn't enough and it shot back into her mouth. "DUH—"

Yang's lilac eyes trailed to the faunus, studying her for a long moment before popping her gum again. Blake flinched. "Are yooou from this area?" She asked, knowing that she was still sounding like she was breaking the ice, but that was essentially what it was.

Blake was drawn out of her train of thought, eyes refocusing to met Yang's gaze. She brought her attention down nonchalantly to fiddle with her gum wrapper. "No, I'm not. I'm from the west. More than 400 miles from here. You wouldn't know where it is."

Yang nodded lightly at that, seeming thoughtful as her brows furrowed. She licked her lips before resuming her chewing, a shrug animating her shoulders. "Well, try me. I went on a lot of road trips in college." Weiss kept the corner of her eye on the lot of them, folding a shirt and putting it in an accumulating pile.

Blake laughed bitterly at the thought of her "home" being a tourist attraction. "I'm positive you've never been there. It doesn't matter anyway. It was flattened."

Yang moved to put her other hand on the propped up back, shifting her weight from one foot into another. "Wow! Something we all have in... in common. Heh. Yeah... me and Ruby found Weiss in the same situation as us. No one around and nowhere to go, with everything gone..."

Weiss directed her attention back to Ruby, for what she was doing seemed to be far more interesting than Yang chatting up the faunus girl. "Do you even know what you're doing?" she asked without malice, brows furrowing. "Come here." She put her hand out expectantly, beckoning her forward.

Ruby whined, pouting as she went to crawl over to the other girl, balling the rest of the balloons in her hand as she came over and plopped down in front of her, handing her the one she was trying to get to work. "My cheeks hurt," she muttered as she went to take another one out of the bag and tried stretching it, first.

Without a word, Weiss received the balloon and began stretching at it, her eyes falling to Ruby's own task. "You're doing it all wrong, so it's no wonder you hurt yourself." For a moment she thought about how Ruby had her own mouth on the thing, but... to prove a point, she would have to ignore it.

Blake watched the two as she listened to Yang, a noncommittal grunt sounding from her. "It's like this everywhere, as far as I know."

Hearing that news wasn't entirely surprising to Yang, though there was a crushed hope within her that didn't want that to be the case. She hummed, letting go to plop down on the bumper of the van. "Have you travelled a lot? And seen everything, I mean..."

Blake watched Ruby and Weiss try to blow up balloons, a hint of amusement at the sheer existence of the task. "I haven't. I barely left home. A couple years ago, I finally was freed. That's when I joined... the..." She paused, knowing full well she didn't have to say it in order for Yang to get the point. "I haven't seen everything, but I've seen a lot. But that really depends on what your definition of 'everything' is."

Yang leaned back on her arms, looking behind her towards the younger two. The faunus had went quiet, as well, as she watched Weiss and Ruby. Yang smiled at their new small activity, amused as Weiss lifted the balloon and blew a long breath into the expanding rubber. She seemed indifferent about the quickly expanding balloon. Ruby had stopped what she was doing and was practically jumping in excitement, her hands clapping together as Weiss finally went to tie the thing off. However, the balloon shot from her grasp, bouncing off the car wall and going limp yards away from the vehicle. There was silence as Weiss was unmoving, her hands still grasping at an invisible balloon and her eyes set deadpan forward. Yang tried so hard to keep her laugh down. She was failing.

Ruby was laughing so hard, she couldn't keep herself upright.

"OHMIGOD WEISS! YOUR FACE! I CAN'T GO ON—"

Yang roared along without remorse in obnoxious laughter, holding her gut and rolling backwards. Weiss placed her hands conservatively on her lap as the two of them cackled on. If she was a teapot, though, she was steadily beginning to boil with the onslaught of laughter.

Blake raised a brow as she watched the two bawl in their shared merriment. It chided on a slight smile from her. For the most part, she was quiet, however, watching in amusement as the scene unfolded.

"DID YOU SEE HOW FAR THAT THING WENT?! PRICELESS!"

"RIGHT?! THE WAY IT BOUNCED OFF EVERYTHING, HOLY CRAP IT WAS LIKE A SUNDAY CARTOON!"

She grounded her teeth together, and finally Weiss flailed, screeching in frustration. "GRRGGH! WOULD YOU SHUT UP?!"

Ruby went to drag herself up next to Weiss, tears at her eyes and seemingly unphased by her outburst. "Ohmigod," she paused with more laughter. "Don't worry, Weiss, we have more! Please don't do that every time or else I will die, I swear!" She smirked, nudging the girl she was sitting next to, now, with an elbow and reaching forward to grab another balloon.

"I don't know why you're bothering anyway! It's not like these stupid things are exactly going to help anyone." Weiss kept a frown on her face, not finding any bit of this amusing. Her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, and she couldn't bring herself to make eye contact with Ruby. Instead she just crossed her arms, her elbow brushing against the other girl due to close proximity.

Ruby simply smiled and continued to try and mess with the balloons. "They're really awesome. That's how they're going to help." She shuffled, slumping against the wall and pressing most of her side against Weiss in the process. She lifted another balloon to her lips and attempted to get past the first initial gust of breath, tapping her feet idly.

Yang attempted to collect her breath as her initial laughter died down immeasurably, her eyes drawing to Blake. She made a note that the faunus wasn't devoid of humor, and it even warmed her a little to see her try to hide a smile. "What d'you intend to do now, Blake? You're definitely going to be up and running within the next day or two." She didn't know where the question came from, but it just seemed to be the right thing to ask right then.

Blake paused as she tried to think. By herself, she'd definitely be rooted out and wouldn't last very long. She thought about what she had said to Yang before the other two came along, about how she wanted to die. There was nothing good in this world for a faunus, especially in its current state. She decided then that she would leave. She would leave and she wouldn't tell any of them, because it was better that way. "I don't know," she said slowly, the guilt for her decision weighing on her as she looked down with a troubled expression.

With a puff of air and a huff, Ruby turned her head towards the faunus. "Just stay with us! We'd love to have you! That'd be super cool! Weiss can be a bit mean sometimes and Yang makes the worst jokes... but I like to think I'm really nice! Wereallywan'tyoutostayokay!?"

Yang nodded along, adding a "Yup!" before she paused and realized exactly what Ruby said. "Wait a minute! My jokes aren't bad! They're just... really good jokes not delivered at the right moment sometimes." Yang returned to Blake, smiling widely. "We'd be glad to have ya, though. Really."

Weiss sort of turned away from Ruby, not quite able to face her as long as they were sharing a spot like this. Why she didn't try to move away was beyond her. Instead she planted her chin on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. She left her thoughts outside of the whole conversation, not entirely sharing their opinions about the faunus either.

Blake looked between Ruby and Yang, brows furrowed. With one last look to Weiss, the faunus sighed, fingers brushing over her bandaged wound. They really went out of their way, but Blake knew that they had no idea what they had really gotten themselves into, or what they were yet to get themselves into, if they kept her around. She wished she could explain that to them, but they were a stubborn bunch, she could tell.

There was no doubt that, when she was at her full strength, that she wanted to help these people as they helped her. It wouldn't feel right to just leave them without owing them that much. But at what cost would that be? Who knew how long it could take before she had decided she had repaid them in full and she was off? Blake subconsciously ran her fingers through her hair, fingers brushing over the ligament of one of her faunus ears. She didn't respond, thoughtful with a defeated look on her face.

Ruby tilted her head and made a bit of a face, nudging Weiss softly with her elbow. "Say something..."

Having tuned out the bulk of the conversation, Weiss turned her attention to Ruby, realizing that Blake had not given them a complete answer yet. It seemed like it ultimately fell to her to convince Blake to stay. When it came down to it, maybe the faunus couldn't be that bad for them. It may take more for her to feel more sound, but they had practically been untraceable by other faunus who wanted to do them harm. If there were any. She sighed finally, her eyes landing on Blake, still unreadable.

"...Fine. She can stay. I'm sure she's far away from her friends, so we're all she's got," she reasoned, shrugging.

Ruby clapped her hands together excitedly, smiling wide at the decision. Weiss's approval really meant everything, even if it wasn't all that heartfelt, that meant Blake at least had a chance to prove herself, now. And from experience, that was the best way to be Weiss's friend. She may have only known her for a short while, but all it ever took was some good ol' fashion bonding time and you were good with Weiss.

At least Ruby thought she was good with Weiss. With a curious glance at the white-haired girl, Ruby put on a thoughtful look, repeatedly tapping the deflated balloon she had in her hand on her chin.

Blake looked to Weiss and Ruby then to Yang. She shrugged her shoulders, a small nod animating her as she brought her eyes down. The last thing she could do is be of use to them and try to make up for how they've treated her, but she decided that the second it wasn't safe for her to be around them anymore, she would leave, no questions asked.

"Thank you," the faunus murmured.

"Awesome! Now all you need is your initiation. It's the only thing that's required of you!" That caused the attention of the Ruby and Weiss to shift to Yang as the blonde shot up in a sitting position and moved closer to Blake. They were curious as to what she was referring to.

Blake's expression remained even, making no attempt to shy away at the approach, her head tilting slightly as she traced the padding at her side. "What do you mean?"

Yang looked between the lot of them before inspecting Blake curiously. "It's easy, really! To be with us, you've gotta set a small goal. Nothing long term, but something obtainable! That way we can try to do it or get it! So what'll it be? Back rub? Scratch behind the ears?"

With a long blink and a slight flush of the cheeks, Blake looked away, frowning. "I see what you mean by the terrible jokes," she murmured over to Ruby, who nodded and blew a raspberry at Yang. "A goal..." She sighed, looking around as if she would find such a goal within her surroundings to accomplish. "I guess... I guess I'll just focus on getting better until I think of something else."

Even though her joke wasn't terribly reciprocated, Yang still was a good sport about it, a smile on her face. But not before she stuck her tongue out at Ruby, smirking. "Sounds good! Very... doable!" She returned, going to fish up a water bottle to down a few gulps herself before offering it to the faunus.

Blake peered back to the blonde as she lifted the water bottle to her lips, gratefully taking it from her. She looked at the rim of the bottle for a brief second before lifting it to her mouth and downing most of its contents modestly.

Weiss uttered something under her breath as she watched on, her attention returning to Ruby. "And what about your wish? We've been collecting stuff to burn since we started."

The youngest of the group hummed, tilting her head back and going to put the balloon in between her teeth before pulling on it in thought. "Hmm... I really, really wanna figure out a way to watch Hocus Pocus. 'cause like really. I know it's a little bit out there... but I'll think of something smaller later."

"There are a few ways to watch a movie," Weiss began, lifting her hand to stroke down the length of her ponytail and bring all of the strands to drape down her shoulder. She was on board this suggestion, really, as a movie would have been very welcomed from their usual strenuous activities. "Which all requires an energy source, though..." And they were fresh out of those.

Yang rose her hand as if being called on to speak. "I know how to make a car battery generator!"

Weiss's eyes narrowed at the blonde, throwing a hand in the air. "You're only saying this NOW?!"

"We didn't need one!"

"DAMN IT YANG!" Ruby exploded, bumping into Weiss in her exclamation. "I keep forgetting you were an engineering major! You let me touch wires! It had totally slipped my mind!" She smiled, beaming with excitement.

Yang shrugged, not really finding the problem with letting her little sister put something into practice that she had learned. "I don't go around watching YouTube videos like that, but you seemed to have a really good grasp on it. If I had done it, I would have taken forever!" But she would have gotten it eventually. Probably.

"Oh my gosh. Do you think watching a movie is really possible?! I mean. What kinda stuff do we need?"

Blake looked to Yang, curious of what answer she had to give to Ruby. The excitement was infectious. It was amazing how something so meager seemed to lift their spirits so much.

"Well… we'll also need to find a… a lawn mower." Now that she tossed out the idea, though, it seemed like it was farther away than she had first offered. She scratched at her head, staring up into space and thinking through the steps. "Preferably with a horizontal shaft motor. If we found a home improvement store that isn't completely trashed, then I'm pretty sure I can get all of the stuff, though."

Weiss stared holes into the blonde, looking the most unamused she had in a while. "Fine, then. It'll just have to be added to our list of things to do and get. Anyone else want to throw out excellent ideas that won't happen within the day?"

Ruby made a guttural noise as she flopped onto Weiss's shoulder. "S'mooooores," she practically purred. Now that they had the fire wood, why not? Where should they even burn a fire? Should they wait?

Yang's eyes lulled closed as she imagined biting into a gooey chocolaty treat, salivating just thinking about it. God those sounded great. And a well-needed treat, at that.

"S'mores," Weiss repeated incredulously, peering down at the younger girl on her shoulder. Though her front was still as resilient as ever, she found her resolve weakening on the inside. "Do we even have everything that constitutes a typical s'more?"

"I bet we could with lots of searching! That's it, though! Next goal: ooey gooey delicious s'mores." Ruby was satisfied with the decision. She tried blowing up her balloon one last time with one big preparation breath. The sound of her gum shooting into the inside was unmistakable, as well as her groan of agony.

"NO WAY!"

A single "hah!" left Weiss at the younger girl's utter failure. A slightly condescending smile painted her features (though it seemed to be all that Weiss was capable of) and she flicked the balloon before returning to crossing her arms.

"We can give it a shot," Yang confirmed, looking to Blake to see if she was on board with the plan as well.

Blake looked down, avoiding Yang's eyes and giving neither approval or a declination. She really decided she had no say in the matter. It was all at question of how they could possibly be like this in a time that was so dire. It was such a scenery change from her trek with Adam and the other White Fang faunus; straight-faced and all either near starving or injured. They had every right to be more than displeased with their situation. Yet here, ignorance was bliss. Blake wondered exactly how much these three knew.

She wasn't counting on a whole lot.


	6. Reality Check

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. Hello! It's been a while. So. This chapter has been written for a while but me and Tino completely ended up changing the direction of the story and scraping what we had initially prepared to release, or at least pushing it back to a much later time. We're turned around on where we want this to exactly go, but we're happy with the direction this is taking. Maybe you've noticed the "horror" genre this has been put under. Yeah. Me neither. We're gonna work on that. For now, things get heavy and we'll be attempting to update more often in the future. School has been busy for both of us, unfortunately. We planned to have this finished by the end of summer originally, but of course, ended up rethinking the whole thing. Also, due to assumption of lack of interest, we've hesitated in continuing this story at all, but it would be sad to do that before it's even gotten to the really good stuff. That being said, a lot of care went into this chapter to try and dictate the direction for the rest of this story. Thank you for reading and please do leave some feedback. It really helps us consider and push out new content for this story. Thank you thank you.
> 
> Warning: this chapter contains gore.

"Medicines, vitamins—matches if we can, or a lighter—a flashlight, or batteries for our old one..."

Weiss continued to name items off of their new "shopping list", extending one finger for each thing she thought of. Ruby acutely scanned their surroundings as she listened. They could miss anything if they weren't careful.

It was nice that they fell into some sense of daily ritual. Her and Weiss were trusted with the scavenging in the meantime while Blake recovered and Yang guarded their stuff. Needless to say, Ruby and Weiss were getting pretty good at looking for the needles in the haystack. Or "happening" upon them, at the very least.

The both of them ended up working rather well, surprisingly. Well, maybe not all that surprising. Because Weiss was really, really smart and Ruby was kinda, well... Ruby. They made it work and Weiss didn't yell at her as much, anymore. Which she was glad for. Because not-yelling Weiss was actually pretty cool.

Ruby's gray eyes watched the floor, searching about vividly and with purpose. "Oh, and we need water," she added to the end of the list. They always needed water. There was no such thing as too much water! She looked to Weiss with a smile, bright and big. "Oh! And chocolate. Or marshmallows. Or gram crackers. Yum."

Weiss rolled her eyes and shook her head. "…Right. We haven't checked that building over there yet."

Looking to where Weiss was pointing, Ruby started ahead off in a b-line towards said building, unable to find any sort of tangible sign for the place right away. It sucked, because the last time they tried getting into an unmarked place whose sign had been desecrated, it was just a bond sells place or something.

The windows were shattered inwards and what remained of a car protruded out of the wall. A result from a nasty collision. Residue from a fire blackened the brick around the empty, brittle shell of the vehicle. Weiss moved around the defaced building as Ruby stared at the wreckage.

"Hey, Weiss?" Ruby started, following behind her. "What do ya think about Blake? She's not so bad, is she? I told you she wasn't so bad." The whole group knew that Weiss's opinions dictated how smoothly things went. Somewhat.

It had only been two days since the faunus girl had awoken and she was already looking a lot better and moving around. It was really encouraging and it looked like she was going to be totally fine, after all.

"There's not much to say. I think she's still not telling us all that we ought to know, though."

Ruby hummed in response as she crossed her arms. "Don't you think she'll tell us if it's really important? I don't know why she wouldn't... she seems like a really cool chick. That's all we are. A bunch of cool chicks." She flashed a smile towards Weiss, beckoning her towards the building as she took initiative and headed towards the door.

"The first one to start labeling is the one trying to reassure herself," Weiss commented with a wry smile.

Ruby gave Weiss serious eye shade, an amused smile at her lips. "Joking beside," the brunette started, testing the front door to see if it was open, which it was after a bit of a shove. "I hope that'll be sooner than later, if my hunch is right." Ruby's smile faded as she looked in on their new scavenging zone. "Put yourself in her shoes. She's stuck with some random cool girls she doesn't know and she's not too sure what to think or do. When she opens up, it'll all be super duper."

Weiss came up behind Ruby and was greeted with the sight that looked something like a receptionist's desk with a waiting lobby.

 _Some sort of business office?_  Ruby wondered to herself.

Weiss stepped in past Ruby to get a better look. Ruby peaked in after her, a strange air about the office that made her hesitate.

Dirt and dust had begun to coat all the surfaces, everything just as disheveled on the inside as it was outside. Weiss stopped as she leaned and looked down a hallway that was sharply hidden from the main room. "Prop the door open. It's a little dark back here," she told the younger girl.

Ruby did as asked, kneeling down to shift through the items of her backpack to find something to keep it open when she saw an empty magazine rack a little bit away. She jumped up towards it and dragged it over, setting it in between the hinges and the wood door. It wasn't a lot of light shed into the main room, but it was something.

Ruby looked around, pulling her shirt up to her nose at the dust practically cluttering in the air. Paintings of various white dentures covered the walls and certificates in shattered frames littered the floor. "Dentist's office? Yuck. I used to always hate going to the dentist. 'cause I almost always had a cavity," her muffled voice started.

Weiss made her way into one of the darker corners without hesitation, her steps slowing as she took the time to adjust to the dark. "With this office visit, now, cavities are the least of your worries," she said as she glanced down and put one foot in front of the other. "Let's split up and get out as quickly as we can."

* * *

Yang chucked off another small rock from the side of the parking garage, her eyes more or less surveying Weiss and Ruby until the both of them disappeared from sight and entered a building a couple blocks down. The sun was high in the sky and she found herself pulling her orange scarf down a little in favor of catching more of a breeze. She additionally pulled up the sleeves to her flannel for good measure. It was a change from the dreary cloudiness that had been around for a few days. The overcast failed to yield any rainfall, however. A total waste!

"Sooo… you certainly are getting a lot better!"

Blake didn't make a move to reciprocate the conversation, her arms folded in front of her as she leaned against the cement railing, eyes wandering the horizon and everything in between. She slowly brought her gaze to the blonde next to her, brows furrowing.

A pause.

Yang smiled down at her, wondering for a moment why Blake seemed so lost. Did she not remember?

Blake slowly replied. "Yeah... I guess that's what you can call it."

"I was just sayin' because of that thing you said. About how your goal was to get better. And you've been moving a lot more recently," the blonde commented, glancing elsewhere to pick up another stray rock and toss around in her gloved hands.

"Oh," Blake said nonchalantly, eyes following the rock as it was unceremoniously tossed from the side. "Do I have to pick another one already?" The faunus girl murmured in a low voice, nervously shuffling her feet.

"Well, not right away." Yang shrugged. "You've got time to think about it. I mean, unless you're totally better and enthusiastic about gettin' something done." She kneeled to pick up another rock, though she paused in the middle of the action as she noticed more rocks closer to Blake. She reached and snatched one up almost cautiously. She then straightened her back and tossed the rock in the air, catching it a few times.

Blake kicked over more rocks in Yang's direction idly, eyes drawing down to become more absorbed in the meaningless task as she thought. Anything she immediately knew she wanted was too much. Returning to the White Fang. Finding some way to fix all of this. Getting far away from here.

"I want..." The words came from her mouth before she really even knew what she was going to say. "I want to be able to read something."

Yang caught the rock in her hand, staring over at the girl. There were a lot of other ideas that came to mind when she thought of what Blake would want, but that certainly wasn't one of them! "Oh yeah?" she asked rather enthusiastically, already knowing that that was something way in her control. "What, like a book?"

Blake had to stop herself from bursting out into laughter at the question. She was able to control herself as well as ever. She smiled and shook her head slightly at the silly question. "Yes. Preferably something with a story."

"Well, why didn't you say earlier! We could go by a library, or maybe Ruby's got something in her bags that she might like to share. I mean, she got REALLY into werewolves a while back so she may have something interesting on her!"

Blake turned to look at Yang at that, perking up and looking a bit surprised. "Wait. Really?"

"Yup." She confirmed it without skipping a heartbeat, tossing the rock with as much arm as she could manage. She had to block her eyes from the sun to watch it sail as far as it did.

Nice.

* * *

Ruby pulled a box loose from the top shelf of the cabinet, numerous packets of braces bands pelting her in the face and a handful of other items falling past her. She huffed and plopped the box down into the sink, looking into its contents with a skeptical eye. Some sort of powders? She picked up the containers and shook them, almost positive there was no use in looking any further here.

"Find anything, Weiss?" She called over her shoulder as she went to pick up her bag.

"Not really," the other girl called monotonously from another room, knowing full well beforehand that this search would be prove to be pointless. She hoped that Ruby wasn't destroying anything, but judging by the noise she was making, she highly doubted it. "I found a drawer full of dental tools, but I can hardly think of a practical use for them." Weapons were the most plausible, in any case.

Ruby snorted obnoxiously. "We should bring back some. The sounds of them literally make Yang cringe. That would be so funny. But that also requires powering them..." A pause. "Okay, yeah, never mind." Weiss didn't hear her, but she liked thinking out loud.

Ruby sighed and returned to the hallway, kicking through a pile of rubble. Part of the ceiling had caved in, dully illuminating the dirty space. They weren't going to find anything here.

"We should go," Weiss started from the other room. "We ought to try finding a supermarket soon. If there's anything I've noticed, it's that people didn't steal everything when evacuating."

It could hardly be called stealing, but Ruby would give business owners the benefit of the doubt. "Guess so," Ruby shoved her hands in her pockets and began to gather towards where she heard Weiss calling from.

Weiss slipped the drawer shut, eyes settling on the other end of the office. She let out a breath through her nose, hand glazing over the patient's chair as she passed it before she reached out and tried the last door. Her eyes narrowed as she peered into the pitch blackness of the last unchecked space. There was a collection typical shelves. One was toppled over not far from the door way. Beyond that, there was _something._ Her eyes refused to register it right away. But when she did, the blood drained from her face and her stomach turned sickly. She became rigid and overcome with confusion and shock.

Ruby stepped into the office, failing to notice Weiss's demeanor. "Do you think we could find any kinda medicine? Dentists use medicine on their patients, right? Some sorta numbing agent." No answer returned her as Ruby's ashen eyes inspected the other girl's posture, still failing to understand what had occured. She leaned against the wall and tilted her head. "Weiss?"

Weiss was focused on keeping her composure. She struggled to keep her breathing even. "I... I think someone got hurt in there," she managed.

Ruby lagged in her response, brows furrowing as she began to lean off of the wall to go check it out.

"What do you mea—"

A loud splintering crack sounded as Ruby shifted her weight. The wall suddenly fell in behind her, her momentum quickly lost as she sunk back with a yelp. The floor caved in, wood boards giving up as she fell through. A shower of rubble and crumbled drywall dropped with her, the light around her disappearing into a rumbling pit of darkness.

Her heart pounded in her ears. She didn't fall far. She could see the opening she sunk through.

A rancid smell assaulted her senses and her stomach threatened to empty its contents. Her arm immediately went to cover her face and tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as the scent burned all throughout her lungs. She went to try and stand, not feeling hurt as she wobbly lifted herself from the pile of rotting wood and drywall. Ruby coughed, not able to say much else.

"Ruby!" Weiss's worried voice called from above. "A-are you hurt?" There was a lot of shuffling from above, a few more pieces of drywall knocking loose, birthing more debris in the air.

Ruby was suddenly so nauseous. "Weiss," she murmured, trying to clear her head and will her heart to calm as she looked through the dirt and dust cloud. "Weiss, I'm fine, I think," Ruby replied a bit louder, strangely sick to her stomach as she felt around for some sort of leverage. Her body was heavy and didn't feel real.

"H-hold on and don't move," Weiss called, an unmistakable amount of panic in her voice. "I think these curtains should be enough for you to climb up with!"

Ruby shuffled through the dark, eyes gradually adjusting as she tried to gauge her surroundings. What the hell did she fall into? She got as close to the light as possible, looking around at the engulfing black.

"Weiss, I think I see a door down here. This might be storage. I could find something." Ruby made a makeshift mask out of her shirt. It hardly coated that acrid, awful stench.

Ruby squinted her eyes and shuffled her feet. She was standing in something sticky. The odor was so strong, she could taste it on her tongue. A sharp metallic scent became sickeningly apparent. She felt her heart beating in her throat and a sharp saltiness assailed her tongue.

"Oh my god, I'm going to throw up," Ruby mustered.

"I'm trying to work fast," came Weiss's more distant voice. "Just don't move from where you are, nothing else matters other than your safety!"

Ruby turned away from the darkness, leaning onto the cold cement just below her salvation. Her forearms crossed in front of her mouth in a feeble attempt to bide the smell. She pressed her face to her arms, trying to regulate her breathing past the uncontrollable pounding of her heart. The desire to fall over and wretch with every sip of tainted air was unbearable. Her hand brushed against the wall and a deep cut gouged into the cement caught her attention. She harshly held her arm to her mouth as she brought the pads of her fingers over the marred surface. There were some sort of scratch marks all over. She looked down a little further and her breath stopped dead in her throat.

A body. Crumpled. She fell just in front of it and hadn't seen it. The head was bowed down and coils of something spilled from a cracked skull and the limbs were bent and twisted and the chest was crushed in and open and—

She had to look away. It was as though she stared for hours as it was.. Her whole body began trembling, tears burning a path down her cheeks. Ruby looked up to the watery light where Weiss was just moments before. Quick, shallow breaths left her and was so dizzy. She couldn't believe what she had seen. Ruby wanted out. She wanted out so damn bad. "Weiss, Weiss, oh god please help me, please." Her voice was so weak and far away to her own ears past her nausea and elevated heart beat.

Weiss returned to the opening, recoiling from the foul odor before shoving her nose in her forearm. She fed the long drapes of a curtain down into the abyss. "Is that enough?"

There was no verbal reply. Ruby grabbed onto the fabric frantically and tried to pull herself up. With her shaking hands and shortness of breath, it was hard to concentrate. Her hands struggled to maintain a grip and her shoes desperately searched for purchase as her heels, slick with blood, scraped feebly against the wall.

Weiss held out her hand into the dark, reaching as far as she could. "I'm right here! Just grab my hand!"

Ruby could barely see the offered hand past the tears blurring her vision. She used every past bit of her strength reaching for Weiss's hand, holding on for dear life. She pushed unrelentingly against gravity, heaving and struggling with the effort.

Finally— _finally_ —Ruby secured Weiss's hand within her own, realizing that her hands were slightly slick with what she could only assume was blood.

Weiss squeezed as hard as she could, using the leverage the curtains provided to pull her and Ruby up. Her heart lurched when her grip slipped, the wetness of Ruby's hands almost causing her to lose her hold. In a burst of unknown energy, she used all of her power to pull Ruby to safety.

Ruby scrambled to find more purchase far from the hole as soon as the edge became more viable. She latched onto Weiss as she finally cleared the hole, panting and crying as she used Weiss as leverage to move away from the gap, gripping onto the other girl with a frightened fervor. It was impossible to be relieved when the horror and stench was dauntingly fresh in her mind.

"Ruby! Ruby, are you alright? You..." Weiss lost her words, at a loss of what to make out of the terrified girl, blue eyes darting desperately over her. She searched for cuts, signs of pain. She turned Ruby's hands in her own. It was not her blood on her hands. "Ruby, please say something…"

Ruby remained silent, shivering in her own skin as her widened eyes grasped nothing before her, tears streaking her face and weak sobs wracking her body. She smeared blood onto Weiss's shirt, staring off into the dark of that room that would not leave the back of her eyes.

* * *

The orange glowing orb of the sun sunk lower past the crumbling buildings, coating everything in hapless, dying sunlight. Slivers of fading rays of light lit the parking garage, barely illuminating enough for Yang to try and start her fire.

Anything even mildly susceptible to flame was put to the steak—cut out car seats, gathered tree branches, cardboard, broken wood planks, other unidentifiable pieces of material that looked like good fuel fodder. Tonight would be their first night trying a fire. Yang wanted to do whatever it took to lift her sister's spirits.

They couldn't get a direct answer about what Weiss and Ruby had seen, but there was some silent understanding that there were going to be details left unshared for a while. Yang was still trying to calm herself from the panic of the sight of the two blood-streaked girls. No one was injured, however, and that's what mattered the most. At least that's what she kept telling herself.  _No one's hurt. No one's hurt..._

Blake was posted away from the group, back turned as she sat in her own thoughts and listened out for any signs of danger. Her sharp sense of hearing put the group into a fabricated ease. Yang had strictly instructed her to keep a keen look out for danger. It was the first thing she had asked of her since she had woken up. It was a very tense, strange evening.

Weiss silently took to organizing supplies and selecting dinner from inside the car, moving around cans in slow, less than deliberate movements-as if her mind was somewhere else.

A scratchy stretch of felt fabric was draped over Ruby's head. She clenched onto the ends, securing it tight around her frame. She looked down to the ground, an eerie air about her as she re-lived those short, terrible few moments. Those moments of confusion, uncertainty,  _horror._ She shivered, the pallid color of her features displaying a shell of the life that they had once held as she sat in absolute misery and disbelief.

Warm food in their bellies could have a plethora of benefits. With a fire, many of those things were possible. Weiss had finished separating the cans that would consist of their warmed up dinner, checking on Ruby at the corner of her eye again. She had barely budged since they came back, staying retreated underneath her makeshift shock blanket. She wanted to do the same thing. But for some reason she felt like she had to be strong, even when she felt like she was the most fragile, useless girl in the world.

"Hey, Ruby," Weiss called weakly as she leaned out of the car, twisting a can in her hand. She didn't think she had been more careful addressing Ruby.

"Hey, Weiss," Ruby murmured just as softly in response. Her ashen eyes didn't budge from the floor.

Weiss paused for a moment, not sure why she looked toward Yang just then. She met her concerned lilacs for just a second before the blonde returned to her accumulating pile, grabbing her box of matches.

It was one thing for it to be a single sister, but when it was both of them who were silent, it was almost unbearable. Weiss felt like she was put in an unnatural place, unsure of how to approach it. She scooted a little off of the seat, hand on the door frame as she inspected Ruby, huddled against the rear wheel and uninterested in everything around her. "...Do you want to help me pick dinner?"

Ruby moved her chin towards Weiss's voice slightly, eyes unwavering in their bleak trance. She had heard her. She hummed noncommittally, a single note that didn't really mean anything.

Weiss dropped her shoulders a little, something absolutely soul crushing about the girl's answer. Her thin brows furrowed, icy eyes darting out towards where Blake was carrying out her vigil, then towards the disappearing sunlight that painted the pillars of the parking garage. She sighed through her nose, watching Yang strike a match and set it under her pile, concentrated.

She went ahead and selected the food on her own, none of it sounding really appetizing. Nothing did when her stomach was full of bile and her throat was tight. Clam chowder, chicken pot pie filling, chicken noodle soup, and ham and potato soup was what she selected for the four of them. Weiss jumped out of the car with the cans in hand and stepped around the slowly accumulating flames of Yang's fire. Weiss imagined that if this were any other time, the two sisters would be jumping in joy.

Things shouldn't be this way.


	7. From Blood, of Blood

Ruby laid awake, staring at the beat-up ceiling of the car. She rested her head on one of her folded arms, her brows in pain from being cramped in their furrowed knit for so long. She listened to the breathing patterns of Weiss and Yang on either side of her, the only welcomed noise in her thoughts. But even then, it was a temporary comfort.

Yang had scooted closer to her, brushing her side with every breath she took. Even while she tried to lay to rest, she was trying to watch out for her little sister, keeping just a moment's notice away and ever present, should she need her.

It took so long for the both of them to finally find sleep, she noticed. Only when their breaths became mellow and Yang's occasional snoring sounding did Ruby finally realize that they had both found peace with the night. If it could be called that. Weiss's face seemed pained as she rested. She turned every once and a while, trying to find comfort in her rest.

Sleep didn't find Ruby, to her misfortune.

The constant prickles at her skin and the constant loom of danger and fear and uncertainty and everything in between bogged her mind. It had always been a real possibility that something terrible would happen. Ruby only wished her reality check didn't have to be her falling into the very reaches of a horrific scene that that room had possessed.

It could have so easily been her or Yang or Weiss or Blake down there, scared to death and being torn up in that manner.

Who could do that to someone else?

Ruby was the only person who had seen what had been done to those bodies of the four of them. They really had no idea what she saw. But how could she begin to recall it clearly when she didn't know what exactly it was that she was looking at− what could she see wading in that blood, the stinking filth of rotting bodies burning her eyes and making her stomach turn? Where exactly did the throat end and the intestines begin?

She didn't want to remember. She didn't want to see these images in her head anymore. They coagulated in her mind into something more and more horrible the longer she thought of it. That mangled body became more twisted and less human the more she dwelled. And she couldn't will the images away.

Ruby sat up quietly, shivering.

A resound emptiness filled her. She had barely managed to touch dinner. She only ate what her sister forced her to, but even that much made her sick to her stomach and she found it hard to hold her bile. Food was hard enough to come by that she couldn't afford to be like this. She couldn't. She should have just toughened up, but how could she when she had seen what she had? How easily could she be reduced to sitting in a dark place and festering as a simple pile of bones and flesh?

She slipped out of the car, Blake's ears twitching as her feet hit the gravel. The faunus didn't turn to address her. Only when Ruby sat next to her, did Blake finally look to her curiously.

"Not tired?" Blake inquired slowly, a bit of a crack in her unused voice.

Ruby shook her head and pulled up her hood. Silence overcame the two of them. A beat. Another.

"I haven't heard anything out of the ordinary. It's quiet..." Blake attempted at conversation. Ruby looked to the faunus, who looked just as exhausted as she felt mentally. More silence accompanied Blake's words. She seemed to give up on idle chatter at the unspoken affirmation that Ruby wasn't in the mood.

"About what you saw..." Blake started. Ruby was convinced that she was going to try to interrogate her as Yang did, but she was somewhat surprised to hear her speak on. "I've seen my fair share of terrible things." A pause and Ruby looked forward, eyes settling on nothing. There was nothing to see in the dark expanse of the parking garage.

"I didn't grow up here, you know," Blake made a small motion to the space in front of her. "I grew up in the north. Way north. There's supposed to be a lot of countryside there until you hit the sea. Power plants, industrial operations. There would never be any reason for someone from here or anywhere to really travel up there. If you ever got lost, they'd turn you around at some checkpoint on the road. Any deeper in and you'd start to see the watch towers. The barbed wire. Not like they're trying to keep anyone out, but like they're trying to keep us in."

Ruby made no movement to acknowledge Blake's narrative. The faunus continued on without worry. She spoke evenly, low and calm. "There's miles and miles of crops and fields. You could almost see the water completely swallow up the sun every evening. I loved it best when it was cloudy out. That way, it was a break from the relentless sun. It was always better when the sun set or it was overcast because it either meant an easier day or an end to a horrible one. Almost every day was horrible. I wish I didn't know why I was there. It would be easy to have a clean conscience that way because when you start questioning your existence and own mortality, that's when things start to get unbearable. But when that kind of life is all you know, you're so trapped. Restless."

Ruby peeked over at the other girl. Her face was forlorn and her amber eyes were distant, looking about for something that wasn't obvious to Ruby. "What did you do?" The smaller girl asked. Of all things she could have inquired, it seemed the most appropriate.

Blake smiled wryly. "Some let their spirits be broken. When you stop hoping and looking forward and your feet stop moving, you die. When you just keep your feet moving because you are told, your spirit is broken. When you keep moving and looking forward, but don't have any hope... that's the trick, because how can you die?

"I figured, if I could just gather the agency to keep moving and looking to the future because I could... then that was a life I could live by my own standards. When I was liberated by the White Fang, I knew I had done right in continuing on where so many had laid to rest in the grave of the master's will. You don't have to have hope, but if you stop trying... that's not a life anyone wants to live." Blake looked to Ruby, who seemed thoughtful and engulfed by the faunus's murmurs.

"But don't take my words for what they are. You have to experience it yourself. You have to go forward. I know it's hard. I really know." Her fingers brushed idly over her wound. "I wanted to give up. I was lost, but then I was saved  _again_. Hope will find you. I don't know why it keeps finding me, but keep moving. Somehow things work out. The terrible things will be just memories. They become scars you have to wear proudly. You learn something every time. But you can't sit still while it engulfs you. Keep going. You have to because you have people counting on you."

The longest silence yet settled over the two as Blake's words echoed in Ruby's mind.  _Keep going_. It didn't rid of the awful images in her mind. It didn't rid the questions or the struggles. It didn't get rid of the very real danger ahead. The hunger, the cold, the strandedness. Nothing was fixed. But if she could see herself past it, not entirely unscathed, but battle-worn and hardy, she knew she could make it out alright. She knew all of them could. Somehow.

There could be hope out there somewhere.

Ruby wiped away a tear she wasn't aware she had shed. Blake hinted a smile before she looked away. A tender moment settled between them. Ruby quietly wept while Blake accompanied her silently. The faunus noticed the lack of snoring resonating from the car.

They both sat for the better part of an hour, resigned to a quiet vigil, but not before Ruby murmured the most appreciative "thank you" she could manage. Blake nodded humbly before they sat in silence for the rest of the night.

* * *

"We need to go back there."

Yang met Blake's even gaze, her amethyst eyes wide at the ludicrous suggestion.

"What? Wait. You mean... go back to the place that mentally scarred my baby sister for life? Why?" Yang inquired in disbelief.

There were a couple reasons. A growing uncertainty of the fate of her White Fang companions plagued her. It was easy for Blake to pair the two things together. Too easy for her to picture her comrade's faces on corpses. She needed peace of mind. She needed to make sure that it wasn't faunus bodies down there.

The reasons Yang needed to know were different, however.

"We need to see how old the bodies are, rank the damage, and determine how narrowly we missed some bad company. Maybe try to figure out which direction they're headed and split for the opposite."

"There's no way!" The blonde's voice elevated, flustered sick by the idea and reacting hotly. Yang's eyes quickly inspected the other end of the parking garage where the car was parked. Ruby and Weiss were still trying to rest. Blake had walked her far enough away to where she could convince her of what their next plan of action should be  _quietly_ , but that would soon go out the window if she didn't calm down.

Blake maintained a level tone easy as she continued on. "Tell me how many others you have seen since you've started scouring the surface. Anything at all that tells you about how other people are or were surviving up here."

Silence and a stubborn grunt immediately answered Blake. Yang crossed her arms and began to pace. "It's too dangerous. Whatever happened, someone got hurt. I'm not letting anyone back near that place and risking anything. Hell, we don't even know if there  _are_ bodies. Ruby never said anything about it and I'm not going to pry. We just need to get the fuck out of here."

"There  _are_ bodies." Blake knew the sight of death in someone's eyes when she saw it.

"Even more reason for us  _not_  to go back over there. Whatever happened there didn't work out for them, so we keep moving," Yang argued.

Blake felt an ebb of annoyance at the blonde's stubbornness. "We could learn something. If the lot of you haven't seen a single damn body until now, don't you think that's a little strange?"

"It's not strange," Yang articulated each word in a low voice before sighing. "Everyone got scared and high-tailed it out by the masses, or at least those who could afford to and didn't think that this big fucking bomb was a joke."

"Wait. Those who could  _afford_ to?"

Yang nodded her head, brows furrowed. "After the warnings, prices for  _everything_ shot up. Transportation, supplies, you name it. There were a ton of people who didn't have the money to leave and restocked their basements and shelters with the last of their paychecks they had. Me included. So they're bound to show up expired because it's fucking impossible to live out here."

Blake quieted, taking in what Yang had said with a thoughtful, calculated look on her features.

Yang stopped dead in her pacing, a dumbstruck realization on her face as she turned to stare the faunus down. Her crossed arms and her jaw tightened. "Blake... you were White Fang." It was a spoken fact, a hint of accusation in her tone.

"I... still am," she returned, hesitantly. The look in Yang's eyes became strange. Distant. The longer those amethysts searched her, the more uneasy she felt. Blake straightened her back and took a small step away, suddenly feeling the need to appear taller−suddenly feeling like she needed to  _defend_ herself from that gaze.

"You know what happened, don't you?" Yang's arms unfolded and she turned slowly towards her. "You know  _why_."

The shift in energy was unmistakable.

She was in trouble.

Blake's fine-tuned eyes could practically  _see_ Yang's pulse raise. The lids of the blonde's eyes dropped to slits and her fists clenched. She was taller. And Yang didn't have wounds through her stomach that she risked reopening. It was debatable if she was stronger. Blake was still at a huge disadvantage, no matter how it was cut. Blake needed to play it easy. She couldn't afford to play it any other way.

"I-I... I don't−what do you mean?" She was being pathetic. She stumbled over her words like a child. She couldn't have been afraid of Yang. She saved her life. No, she wasn't afraid of her. But, this person before her seemed so drastically different from the Yang she had known just yesterday. Jovial, encouraging Yang suddenly felt so far away and Blake realized she really didn't know her at all. It was foolish to think she ever understood who she was. Humans were never worth their face value.

But Blake needed to stay with these people. They had the tools that might help her to complete her mission. She couldn't risk losing faith with these people. That was what she was afraid of. That had to have been it, right?

Blake hadn't got her hopes up for true companionship with these girls in the first place. She was saved any sort of betrayal she might have felt towards the blonde at the moment. She understood her anger. She was born as the enemy, after all.

"Tell me why all of  _this_ −" Yang threw her hand towards the ruins of the city and pointed in one swift gesture that sent Blake's senses hyperaware. "−happened. You  _do_ know, don't you?" Her voice was dangerously low.

Blake shook her head, trying to find words. Her back pressed to cold cement. When she looked over her shoulder, a pillar blocked her view from the car. When she dare to look back to Yang, she had zoned in very close. Her amethysts were locked to her amber eyes and she was trapped. She could feel an emblazoned air filter off of the taller girl.

"Answer me," Yang murmured, brows furrowed and eyes dark.

"I don't know," Blake returned, figuring she needed to say  _something._

"Why don't you know?" Yang retorted quickly. Her tone was hushed, the type that sent an anxious prickle down Blake's spine.

"I don't know because it's not my concern." Blake shook her head, eyes dropping to watch Yang's flexing hands cautiously. She had used the wrong words. " _Wasn't_  my concern."

"How was it not your  _concern_?"

"I... I didn't−don't−know about the weaponry the White Fang has. It wasn't my  _job_ to be concerned _._ That kind of decision is higher up. So much higher up. I wouldn't have known anything about it. I don't know anything about  _why_. I just know what I'm told. They told me to−" Blake cut herself and swallowed past the knot in her throat.

Yang's palm roughly planted next to Blake's head. "They told you to  _what_?"

Blake hesitated, having a large mental debate with herself. Her lips parted but closed, holding back the words. She broke their unprecedented eye contact, now trying to look anywhere but to the blonde.

Yang lowered herself to try and catch the faunus's eyes again. Blake refused silently, finding her defiance. A tense, stagnant moment settled between them. Yang's fingers balled tightly against the cement. Blake could hear Yang's thundering pulse ease the longer she dragged out her response. Soon, the tightened fist loosened and fell.

The faunus gambled a look back to the blonde. The gaze she received back was suddenly so deflated. Torn and begging. Hopeless and desperate. Beyond that heat that she felt, the anger, there was nothing more than a broken young woman who had lost everything.  _Almost_  everything.

Blake's shoulders sagged. She felt pity. Pity towards a human for the first time in her life.

She felt pity because she couldn't feel sorry.

Yang's cushy life in Vale was gone. She knew what it was like to have nothing.

Is this what it really had to take for them to get it? Was this the intention? The end goal? Is this what the White Fang wanted to teach the humans−loss and sorrow? She didn't know. She honestly didn't know. Not all humans deserved this, she realized at that moment.

"I was told..." Blake started slowly, Yang's tired expression unwavering as she spoke. "... that at any cost, me and seven of the White Fang's finest foot soldiers were to scour the ruins of this city and find _something_ that would point us to where the people in charge of this nation have evacuated to. We needed to find them, capture them, and somehow get them to paint the White Fang in the right light."

Yang shook her head slowly. "What do you mean by 'paint in the right light'?"

Blake furrowed her brows. "There needs to be an understanding that the White Fang couldn't have done all of this. Didn't. We're not the aggressors."

Yang scoffed, lacking the energy to have the biting edge she must have wanted. "Not the aggressors? How do you figure that?"

"Just that," Blake responded adamantly. "We're not the ones at wrong."

"You understand how ridiculous that sounds when literally every news outlet in Vale was running that bomb threat video the White Fang released?"

Blake struggled to respond right away. "That... I didn't... agree with. It had to have been some sort of scare tactic," she mustered.

"If your scare tactic includes going through with the threat, then it was one hell of a scare tactic."

The faunus had no retort. Yang finally removed her eyes from her figure with a sigh. The unrelenting attention she had been scrutinized under had been lifted. Blake allowed herself to physically droop in relaxation. The worst must have been over.

"We'll go and see what happened," Yang started and leaned away from the faunus. She turned away and Blake saw nothing but her blonde mane.

"But." Yang looked over her shoulder. "I'm not letting Ruby or Weiss back into there. So it falls onto you. I still want to leave here as soon as possible. And you're not in terribly wonderful shape yet, either. We'll pack up, drive down, have a look as long as it's easy for you to move around, and split. Siphon some gas and move the hell on. You also haven't slept all night, so you really need to take it easy when we leave. Deal?" Her voice was authoritative. There was would be no debate.

Blake nodded once. "Deal," she affirmed.

Yang started back towards the car before halting once more. This time she didn't turn back to look at the faunus. "I'm sorry for... getting tough with you," Yang continued in a significantly softer tone. "I just don't know what's going on in my head. A lot's happened. I reacted the wrong way. But if what you just said is everything you really know... then my beef is with someone else."

Blake didn't respond. It was understandable. Tensions were high. She knew she wouldn't get hurt. Yang couldn't have had it in her. Something told Blake, however, that that wasn't her final breaking point.

"And... thank you. For Ruby. I heard a little of what you said last night."

It was Blake's turn to look after the blonde.

"She means so much to me, you know? And what you said to her... I dunno. Just... thank you." Yang continued her pace towards the vehicle, disappearing from Blake's sights from behind the pillar.

Blake looked forward and slid down the face of the cement, a hand planting on the bandages at her side. She owed Ruby so much. That's why she tried to talk sense into her. Not because she was particularly attached or anything. It was an eye for an eye. She couldn't afford getting attached to these people. She didn't want to. They were still humans and she was a faunus. They had nothing in common.

At least Blake tried to convince herself of that.

* * *

The engine of the car cut to dead as Yang separated the bundle of wires hanging out from the bottom of the steering wheel. She sighed, patting the wheel and looking to Weiss in the passenger's seat.

Weiss's eyes were trained on the front of the dentist's office, a forlorn look of silence about her.

Yang undid her seat belt and unlocked the doors, looking over her shoulder to Ruby in the back seat. She didn't bring her eyes up to gloss over their surroundings. She seemed content with sitting and waiting until they were far from here.

Yang stepped out and Blake parted the back door on the driver's side, following suit. The blonde inspected the faunus with a quick look.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

The faunus nodded and took a couple of steps. She rolled her shoulders, as if assessing what her body would be able to withstand. The farthest she had gone as of late was just a couple yards from the vehicle.

Yang knew the girl was sturdy. She just hoped she wouldn't push it. Being up just a couple days after being shot was a little much, but Blake had insisted on getting on her feet as soon as possible, if she was at all able-which she was. It wasn't like they were waiting for a stitched wound to heal. They had burned it closed, after all. It was just a matter of treating those delicate scabs nicely so that the scar tissue could settle underneath.

Yang remembered something Ruby had told her. Blake had been out for three days and Yang was carrying Blake to the new vehicle they had acquired-the bigger SUV they had, now. The blonde remembered trying to be extra careful so that she didn't risk reinjuring the faunus.

That was when Ruby said something about how remarkably fast the wound seemed to be healing. Not that she had seen many wounds in the past and was an expert, but the healing process seemed significant. Inhuman seemed to be the correct term to use.

Did faunus really have better healing abilities? It seemed unfathomable.

Yang turned back to the car and pressed the button to lock the doors from the inside. "Alright. We'll be ten minutes tops, I swear. We'll be back quick. If there's any trouble..." Yang looked to Weiss, who had the sheathed knife they had found in the glove box of the SUV handy in her lap. "... there won't be any trouble. We'll be back in a second," Yang finished, closing the door behind her.

Blake passed Yang and went around the wreckage out front. She seemed confident enough that no one else was around, but Yang was finicky and cautious. Nervous. Blake's ease didn't rub off on her.

Inside, the faunus stepped around the pile of rubble in the hall and made a disgruntled noise. "I can smell it from here," she murmured as she perfectly stepped out of the way of boards and crumbled ceiling chunks that littered the floor.

Yang could smell nothing.

Blake maneuvered the space with more finesse than Yang ever could. Yang remembered the flashlight hanging at her belt and pulled it out from the loop she had stuck it in. She held onto it with a vice grip, following behind the faunus as best she could, preserving as much of the battery in the flashlight as possible.

They stepped into the doorway of the room Ruby had fallen through. The curtain splayed around the hole and the dried, bloody footprints were impossible to mistake.

Blake got close to the hole, kneeling down and peering in. She hissed and her hand went to press against her side. She was quiet as Yang stood back, holding her flashlight at the ready. Yang crinkled her noise and brought her forearm up at the hint of an assaulting stench.

"There must be a door that leads to here. I could just jump down but I don't want to risk it. It looks pretty busy on the floor," Blake stood back up after a while-slowly. Her eyes focused on the door opposite the hole. "In here, I'm guessing."

Yang stood back, amazed that Blake was so easily handling the situation. Yang followed her across the room, this time. Blake place a hand on the door handle and paused, panting slightly. She must have been nearing her end. But something told Yang that she wouldn't so easily admit she had had enough exploring.

A faint scratching noise caused Yang to jump out of her skin she turned and nearly tripped over herself, switching on the flashlight and shining it across the opposite stretch of the room.

Blake shook her head. "Rats. Could you calm down? Or you could go wait outside," she was a bit irritated. Perhaps a little frazzled at Yang's sudden freak out over nothing. "No. No I'm fine. I'm good... I'm... good," she murmured after flashing the light back and forth a couple times before turning it off.

Finally ready to move on, Blake pushed open the door. It didn't open all the way. A toppled-over cabinet blocked most of the walkway. "There's another body in here." Blake put a hand on the door as to push it open wider and met resistance with the filing cabinet.

Of course the heavy lifting fell to her. Yang stepped in front of Blake as she wordlessly gave her space. The blonde budged the door open the rest of the way with one powerful shoulder.

Blake gave Yang a look at stepped into the room. It was impossibly dark in here, but when Yang powered on her flashlight again, her heart leaped into her throat at the sight of blood splattered on the toppled cabinet she hadn't seen before. Blake shuffled in without a word.

Just beyond the doorway, the result of the splatter was obvious. Someone had fallen next to it. Or at least judging by the dent in the cabinet, someone had fallen  _with_ it. Yang flashed the light over the corpse, her eyes widening. She stared, going to pull her orange scarf up around her nose at the sharp, unmistakable stench.

Blake kneeled carefully next to the body. It was faced down, a pool of blood extended all around the human. Blake felt an ebb of relief. Yes, it was just a human. She looked up to Yang and the girl flashed the light away from her face-away from the corpse.

"Could you turn it over?" Blake inquired.

Yang nodded, wordlessly stepping closer and nudging the body once. The blonde swallowed the lump in her throat and went through with the notion, boot planting on the shoulder of the body and pushing. It turned and dropped on its back with ease. The body lay twisted, now. Blake scooted back, getting a wide view of the corpse.

"It's not stiff. Blood's pretty much dried. Been dead about a week or more. And how..." Blake looked up to the skull of the dead man. "Most immediately, crack in the forehead. Looks like a blunt-force object. It couldn't have been from being thrown into the metal cabinet. The metal buckled. If his forehead split like this when he hit the cabinet, then the initial splatter would have been much smaller and the bleed would have been less messy. The initial force he hit the cabinet with is impressive... he really went flying."

It was incredible that Blake was able to tell all of this.

Yang shook her head and didn't bother with trying to flash the light back over the corpse. Her stomach wouldn't be able to handle the sight.

The faunus turned to the side of the room where the assaulter would have dealt the final blows. "Blood on the walls back there... I just... can't really imagine how this could have happened in six yards... I don't know anyone who could throw a 180 pound man that far." She went to stand, shaking with the effort. Blake continued down to the darkest edge of the room and peered down. "And there are stairs here. He was running, then. Running up to surface and caught."

Yang stood uneasily near the doorway, her legs refusing to follow Blake right away. Her heart was pounding and the essence of death was so thick in the air. To imagine that was  _more_ to see...

Blake descended down the stairs and Yang clenched her flashlight tightly in her hand. She willed her body to move and followed after the faunus, shining around the light at the dried blood that sprayed the walls, her brows furrowed and her movements uncertain. She didn't want to do this anymore, but she needed to watch out for Blake.

At the bottom of the stairs, Yang stumbled and gagged.

Blake stood wordlessly, eyes scanning the scene back and forth.

Yang could see nothing but the faint illumination of the hole Ruby must have fell through. Something told her she didn't want to see much more. She fell back and sat on the second bottom stair, screwing her eyes shut and pressing her forearm over her scarf in an attempt to block out more of the stench from reaching her nose. She breathed through her mouth to the best of her ability through the scarf and her arm.

The space was the same size of the office above it. More cabinets and spare chairs aligned the walls. Anything beyond that was immediately illegible. Blake walked through slowly, her steps careful as she ventured through the mess. Yang parted one eye, trying to watch her but finding it difficult with her poor eyesight.

Yang grunted and stood, feeling dizzy and sick. She tasted salt on her tongue and bile in her throat. Raising her flashlight, she shone it on Blake. Her back was to her. An uncontrollable force took a hold of Yang's hand, her grip shaking as the light beam fell from the faunus and glimpsed at the bodies-or at the  _parts._

She didn't know where one person possibly started and ended. She couldn't focus her mind to count how many could have possibly been hiding down here. Blood caked the ground on one half of the room, so thick on the ground that only traces had managed to dry. Scrape marks and blood trails of people being dragged around painted what wasn't immediately flooded in blood. Yang realized she could also hint the smell of urine past the iron and rotting flesh.

Yang turned to brace herself on the wall before she lurched, her stomach clutching as she expelled what little was in her stomach.

Yang heaved for breath and spat over to her site, hunched over and her flashlight pointing behind her, forgetting it was even in her hand as she leaned onto her knees. Blake started moving around quickly, finding what sounded like a backpack flapping and jingling frantically. Zippers undid and zipped back up as Blake worked fast, gathering something while the blonde tried to recover herself.

The backpack was shoved against her arm when Blake returned to her side. Yang wordlessly adapted the straps onto her back. It was heavy.

Blake had already started back up the stairs when Yang regained her senses and followed with clumsy, unsure steps as she ascended after the faunus.

Yang had never been so thankful to be away from something before. She would be even more thankful with miles between them and this hell hole.

The body up top seemed even more horrible than it had before when fit together with the horrific tragedy that must have occurred here.

Yang pulled open the back door on the driver's side of the SUV, tossing in the bag with wide, worried glances from Ruby and Weiss settled on her. Blake carefully hopped up into the car and took her seat, an expression that could only be described as aghast plaguing her features.

Yang's hands planted on the floor of the car as she leaned forward and panted, her head bowing. She turned off the flashlight and rolled it into the car, shaking her head.

"Are... are you two alright?" Weiss asked slowly, anxiously awaiting on her two knees as she leaned over the passenger and driver's seats to look between the two of them.

"We won't be if we don't figure out how to really defend ourselves," was Blake's resolved answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and thank you for reading. If you could please leave some feedback and thoughts for me and my brother, it would be appreciated. There have been some comments, both here and on FF, that have really influenced the happenings in these chapters and the direction of the story. There is A LOT left in this story that's going to keep you guessing. The insight, what you think, etc is really interesting so please leave a review and let us know how this is going. Thanks again.


	8. One Foot in Front of the Other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has not been forgotten! As long as RWBY is running, I'll be trying to finish this up. There is one author from here on out and that'll be me, Rio. Enjoy and thank you to the bae for helping me beta this chapter.

Radio static cracked the car’s silence. It was an ongoing drone of informationless noise, about to drive Yang crazy. She was so goddamn high-strung. Ruby switched off the radio after three hours. Weiss sighed in relief from behind the driver’s seat; Yang could still hear the noise going in her head.She heaved a sigh at least once for every ten minutes they spent aimlessly dodging the wrecks and rubble in the road. Her chest was tight and no one said anything when they all skipped lunch. The safety of the vehicle in motion provided a meager amount of ease that no one wanted to disturb. Blake was asleep in the back seat, exhausted from having stayed up all night. Yang was thankful that she was willing to make that sacrifice. The least she could do is try to drive as smooth as possible as they tried to escape this hell.

The same damn scene went on for an impossible stretch of the time. Broken buildings, crashes, fires. She knew to avoid the highways. Everything was so backed up. It felt like everyone in the world failed to make it to where they were going in the end. The idea was to head downtown in hopes of finding help. Maybe the radio towers were still intact and getting closer could provide some information on their fruitless frequencies. It wouldn’t be a bad place to look for supplies, either.

She parked the car in a torn street two hours from sundown and funneled out gas from a truck. Yang figured they were about a two hour drive north from where they started that morning. It would have been an hour's drive without all the damn obstacles. She had driven for eight hours today, and Yang wondered if it'd be any more productive to walk.

As Ruby and Weiss stretched their legs next to the car and Yang finished up dripping the last of the gas into the tank, Blake stirred.Yang placed the fuel cap and glanced over to the faunus, who was sitting with her legs dangling out of the car.

“Morning,” Yang said tiredly, trying to be funny out of habit but falling flat.

Blake pursed her lips and looked away.

Yang planted a forearm on the car, leaning her weight onto it as she inspected the faunus’ bandages peaking up from her torn shirt. “Want me to have a look?” She gestured down to the wounds.

Blake wordlessly removed her shirt and began undoing the bandages. Yang jumped, her brain moving too slow to tell her to be a bit more gentle, but the bandages were already completely undone. Yang crouched down, amazed at what she was seeing.

The bullet wounds were nearly completely healed. Whereas the day before yesterday, they were delicate and could break and bleed with any moderate amount of movement, today they were completely scabbed over, the skin hastily scarring to close.

“I don’t understand. How the hell is it that you can heal so fast?” Yang asked in awe, looking up to meet Blake’s eyes for permission before she pressed around the skin, testing it’s condition.

“This is normal… it’s not fast at all.” Blake said evenly as Yang went and inspected the exit wound.

Yang shook her head. “Definitely not normal. You’ve healed almost completely from a gunshot wound in a little over a week! It would take four or five weeks for anyone else…”

Blake paused, brows succumbing to a furrow. “For a human, that long?”

Yang just stared. “Have faunus always had such amazing healing abilities?”

“As far as I know.”

“So that plus the amazing vision and hearing?” Yang couldn’t believe she didn’t know these things about faunus.

“And sense of smell.” The corner of Blake’s mouth threatened to turn into a grin at just how baffled Yang was.  
  
Yang threw up her hands and stood. “Welp! Looks like you don’t need me or Ruby anymore here! Geez, I can’t believe that. Wow.”

Ruby and Weiss came around the side of the car as Yang stood, her hands planting on her hips .  
“What’s wrong?” Ruby asked softly.

Yang communicated quickly that nothing was wrong. “Blake’s just incredible! She can see in the dark, she’s got excellent hearing, a stellar sense of smell, and healing abilities that are just too good!”

It was Ruby and Weiss’s turns to meet Blake’s eyes with amazement. A small smile broke out on Yang’s lips.  
  
“Wow… I had no idea faunus were so well equipt.” Weiss said.

Ruby gave her a look, shocked at her choice of words. “Weiss! What’s that supposed to mean?!”

Weiss recoiled defensively. “What?! She’s more suit to survive this than any of us!”

Yang watched Blake’s expression bloom into mild amusement and the blonde’s smile faltered. It was really nice seeing something that wasn’t indifference on her face. Blake was really pretty, actually.

Weiss huffed and turned around. “Well, since you’re back to feeling like your normal whiny self, why don’t you go and make yourself useful in the meantime and find something to eat? None of us have had a meal today and quite frankly, we’ve only got a couple more days of food left and even less clean water. Your energy is best used elsewhere.”

“You can’t always derail the conversation with important stuff like that,” Ruby murmured poutily before resigning to popping the trunk open and crawling in.

Yang rose a brow and looked back and forth between Blake and the other girls.She was glad to see everyone in somewhat mended spirits. They really needed some good news like this. “O-kay. How ‘bout we get some food in our stomachs and drive a little bit more into the city? Maybe we can find people there.”  
  
Blake shrugged her torn shirt back on and hummed along with the wordless agreements of the younger two.

* * *

“Careful, Yang! You’re gonna hit this pillar back here!” Ruby warned as she hung out of the window. She bumped her head into the frame of the car when Yang slammed on her breaks.  
  
“I got into this spot, I can get out!” Yang said as she threw the car back into drive and pulled forward to try and complete her 3-point-turn.  
  
“Ow…” Ruby murmured and plopped back into her seat, rubbing at her forehead.  
  
Weiss shrugged unsympathetically. “You should have been wearing a seatbelt.”

Yang groaned and put the car in park before throwing open her door and trudging out to survey the dimensions of the area they were stuck in. She had thought that she could clear a narrow path in the distance but had misjudged the width of the car. Backing out of the tight fit wasn’t an option due to the nature of the debris she cleared going down the path. If she backed up, she’d definitely pop a tire or something. It was always easier getting stuck than getting unstuck.

Yang cursed under her breath and made her way back down to the vehicle. She separated the wires that kept the engine running and looked over the other girls, who were eyeing her and waiting for some sort of gauge of the situation. The absence of the engine became deafening.  
  
Yang clapped her hands down onto the driver’s seat and huffed a grand sigh. “Alright. we can’t go any further and we can’t go back. We’re probably gonna have to ditch the car.”

Ruby deflated physically and slumped back into the passenger's seat. “Do we have to?”

Yang forced a smile and nudged her. “C’mon, let’s go see what we can find. We’re not splitting up anymore.”  
  
A wave of agreement animated the four of them as they parted into the rubble. Yang wasn’t interested in letting her baby sister out of her sight for the time being. The four of them pushing through the destruction was one of Yang’s last sources of strength and motivation.

Navigating the stores proved nearly impossible due to the many buildings that had buckled under their own weight.  
  
Weiss picked out an undamaged coffee pot. She had said something about wanting to make tea upon seeing it.

Ruby showed Yang a broken length of pipe she found protruding out of the wall. It was a little over an arm’s length and it was made of a sturdy copper and nickel alloy. Yang didn’t need to ask why she found such an interest in this pipe. The way Ruby held it insinuated the beginnings of a close-range weapon.

Yang decided to go with something a bit more practical she had found. A baseball bat would have to do. She remembered her days on the softball team in middle school. She wrapped her fingers around the grip instinctually. The handle was wrapped in a layer of worn friction tape and the barrel of the wood was slightly chipped, but it had some good power left in it. She swung it slowly, testing out the movement of the muscles in her arms as she arched the tip of the bat through the space around her. Her purple eyes met Blake’s gaze suddenly. The faunus was peeking over at her from behind the frame of the shattered glass display counter. Yang straightened up and looked away, unsure of why she felt a little embarrassed as she planted the bat across her shoulders and turned to see what Weiss had gotten into since she had last taken her eyes off of her.

Weiss was crouched over a mess of glass, hugging her knees as she looked through the pieces. When Yang neared and peaked over, the shimmer of dazzling golds and gems perched in the fragments of debris caught her gaze.  
  
“Jewelry?” Ruby asked as she crouched down next to Weiss, surprising both her and Yang.

“Yeah… it’s stupid to think this stuff is worth anything anymore, especially stuff that was sold at a place like this, but…” Weiss trailed off.

Ruby stared after her, understanding the sense of longing for that creature comfort in material possession. Ruby looked up to her big sister, who silently nodded to her and turned away to continue to look at another part of the store she hadn’t yet explored. Ruby noted that Yang looked really cool with a baseball bat across her shoulders like that.

“But what?” Ruby inquired softly after a moment as she looked back down to the mess, using her newly found pipe as a crutch to help her balance in her crouched position.

Weiss sighed. “But I still feel like wearing it. The simple things, you know?”

Ruby nodded. And with little hesitation, she pushed aside some of the glass with the end of her pipe and reached into the shards to pull out a wrist chain of a dazzling sterling silver. Her balance faltered a bit as she stumbled forward, catching herself luckily, but gliding one of her fingers along side a jutted bit of glass in the process.  
  
“Ouch!” Ruby hissed as she drew her hand close out of reflex, blocking Weiss’s view from her new cut. The silver dangled from her hand, a stray bead of blood falling just shy from it.

“Idiot!” Weiss whisper-yelled at her, looking over her shoulder cautiously for Yang, who had her back turned for the time being. “If your sister sees what you did, she’ll kill me!”

“Sorry! You looked like you really wanted it and I didn’t think…” Ruby murmured and opened her palm slightly to turn the silver in between her fingers.

The younger girl tensed as Weiss seized her hand and uncurled her fingers to better see the hidden cut, the jewelry spilling out onto her palm.

Weiss paused again, her icy blue eyes darting between the cut and the silver. She looked wildly confused before she shook her head “Y-you’re getting blood all over it,” she continued to whisper. “Why don’t you be more careful?”

Weiss plucked out the jewelry from her hand, hesitating before she pocketed its contents into her shoulder pack and offered out a bit of bandages for her to wrap her finger in. “Cover it. And try not to let Yang see. She’ll have a heart attack.”

Ruby swallowed hard and did as she was told. “You know… I haven’t thanked you at all for the other day.”

The other girl was caught off guard. “Wh-where is this coming from?”  
  
Ruby fumbled a bit and looked down at her finger as she wrapped her fresh cut sparingly with the bandage. “I think I just tried to say thank you by getting that bracelet for you but I messed it up and now you’re helping me again.”

Weiss tried to harden herself, but the concern in her tired eyes seeped through. “You don’t need to thank me for any of that. We _do_ still have a deal, so I need you to follow through and not get lost somewhere along the way.”

“Helping you find your dad wasn’t really a deal,” Ruby said. “An agreement, maybe.”  
  
“Okay, whatever. An agreement. Plus, I’m not so cold-hearted as to just leave you there.” Weiss replied, failing to keep the indifference in her voice as she went on. “You were super freaked out and I kind of was, too.”  
  
“I _was_ super freaked out,” Ruby repeated after her in a mumble. “I’m still freaked out, but I guess if I have you and Yang and Blake to pull me out when I need it, things will be okay.”

As Ruby finished patching up her finger, she looked back to Weiss, finding the pensive look she held a bit intrusive. “What?”

“If you really want to thank me, stop doing silly stuff that puts you in danger,” Weiss replied evenly after a stagnant bit of silence.

“It’s nothing I can help… but I know I have to be much more careful. I’m trying.”  
  
“This isn’t such a good first step.”

Ruby sighed defeatedly. “I know…”  
  
Footsteps crunched behind them and they both bolted to stand and they pivoted on their heels to face the sound. Ruby’s hands flew behind her back as she hid them.

“Oh! It’s just you, Blake,” Ruby murmured and relaxed.

Blake’s head tilted slightly as she inspected the girl’s posture. “Did someone get hurt? I smelled blood.”

“What? What happened, now?” Yang peeked over from the opposite side of the pillar she disappeared behind.

“NOTHING!” Weiss and Ruby called simultaneously, causing the blonde to blink in confusion.

“We should set up camp…” Blake shrugged and turned away, heading back to the direction of the car.

Ruby and Weiss began to follow suit closely behind. Yang looked back into the broken pawn shop, her fingers tapping on the grip of the baseball bat across her shoulders as she looked over the scene one last time before departing after her company.

* * *

The car would serve as a shelter for one more night.

A camp fire was established near the vehicle as they set out their findings and the remains of their supplies. They hadn’t been scavenging for long today and had failed to gather any more food to add to their dwindling rations. Ruby and Weiss began to open and warm dinner over the fire quietly.

Blake shouldered the pack she made earlier that day below the dentist’s office, bringing it over to the fire. It made a heavy, resounding _thump_ as she plopped it down onto the cement. She crouched next to it, unzipping the flaps as she began to draw out the largest items.Yang stopped prodding the fire as she glanced over her shoulder to the unfolding display.No one knew the contents of the bag but the faunus herself, after all.

Blake unveiled a couple of water bottles, a bag of jerky, two walkie talkies, a gas mask, an unmarked and thin-sounding box that rattled like a tin can, two magazines filled with 9 mm. bullets, and lastly, a single handgun. All the items she had gathered were crusted with a dried, flaky layer of blood. Upon further inspection of the bottom of the bag, Blake found a ring of keys, a lighter, a bar of soap in a sandwich bag, and a glass bottle of liquid.

When Blake finished laying out all of these items, Yang came to stand over the display. A gasp from her caused the faunus’s ears to twitch. She looked up to see wide, strikingly amethyst eyes looking down to her in amazement.

“A gun…?”

Blake nodded slowly, taking out the magazine of the pistol without looking. With her eyes still locked to Yang’s, she raised the empty clip and turned it in her fingers. Yang’s gaze drew to the mag and she stared, unsure of what Blake was trying to tell her.

“Empty.” Blake said.

“... and?”

“Ten shots, gone.” Blake continued. She placed the handgun on the sheet metal beneath her with a bit of a clutter. “Smelled like gunpowder in there. The gouges on the walls, the shots let off into the darkness…”

Yang paused, swallowing past the knot in her throat as she shoved her hands into her pockets and shuffled her feet where she stood tensely. “Yeah sounds like hell…what do you think could do something like that?”

Blake inspected the blonde for her body language. She was rightfully uneasy. Yang always tried to be the most steely of the group. Blake was unsure how to judge the more and more frequent lapses in Yang’s confident exterior around her. The faunus shook her head slightly and looked down, loading another clip into the gun. “I don’t ever want to know first-hand. But I was serious about you all learning self-defense.”

“I do know how to swing a bat and throw a punch. I used to box a lot on weekends,” Yang said. “I was pretty good. And of course I’ve taught Ruby the basics.”

Blake was relieved with the revelation that she didn’t have to start from square one with the siblings. “Good. After dinner, we should cover those basics again.”

“You got it.”

Dinner was silent. The sun’s rays dimmed as the evening grew older. Blake looked around the fire with only her eyes. The girls were all still, drawn into themselves, the crackle of the flames as loud as the churning of their thoughts. The light of the fire made their empty food cans glisten.

Blake stood suddenly. All but Yang looked up to her curiously.

“I have a new goal.” Blake said.

“You do?” Weiss asked in a small voice. Yang’s attention was perked at this.

“Yes. I’ve mostly healed. So now it’s my goal to get you all to thoroughly be able to defend yourselves. It’s dangerous out there and you could all use a bit of moving around right about now,” Blake explained. She needed them to get her mission finished. They were her kind’s last hope.

“You still remember how to throw a jab, don’t you Ruby?” Yang softly nudged her sister and Ruby cracked a little grin. “C’mon, let’s get to work.”

After a good stretch, Yang and Ruby visited the basic form of a good punch. Weiss watched, hesitant to join. Blake came up beside her and beckoned her to learn from her, instead.

“Do you have any combat experience?” Blake inquired as she adjusted Weiss’s closed punching fist.

“I’ve been doing fencing since I was young,” Weiss replied as she extended her arm into a more-or-less proper punching form. Blake inspected it, bending Weiss’s arm a little so that her elbow unlocked.

“Fencing? You know how to use a rapier?” It was a strangely specific skillset yet it could prove to be extremely useful.

“Of course. So that means that I’m pretty good at reading my enemy for possible attacks.”

Blake hummed as she went around and offered one of her palms out as a faux punching pad. “I see. With hand-to-hand combat, it could be just as fast.  
  
Weiss swung to hit her hand, hesitating as she came into contact with her skin.

“Less arching movement. Think like a snake. Just dart straight out, get close so your elbow doesn’t lock and hit with confidence. You’re not going to hurt me.”

Weiss huffed. “I wasn’t afraid of hurting you…”

The second punch was a significant improvement. “Good. Keep going.”

As Weiss tested the length of her arm and learned the gesture with the other arm, Blake went on about what she thought to be quintessential to learning hand-to-hand. “While the playing field of fencing is leveled by rules and structure, in hand-to-hand, you need to focus on your strengths as they apply to you. In a life or death fight, you can’t rely on throwing your hardest punches at someone who is twice your size and throwing their hardest punches. So in your case, you need to use your perception to quickly dismantle your opponent. There are a couple ways that I’ll show you how to do that.”

Weiss was very focused as she listened to the faunus.

“This just takes practice. It’s unlikely that we’ll be truly ready for whatever heads our way, but we can sure as hell try to be as prepared as we can get.”

When Weiss’s punches got lackluster and lost their precision due to fatigue, Blake gauged the condition of the sisters, who seemed to be tiring from their activities, as well. “Alright, we’ll stop for a bit of a lesson.”

Relieved, Weiss just panted and nodded as she halted and went to stretched out her arm muscles.

Yang and Ruby paused as Blake neared and beckoned Yang over. They reconvened next to the camp fire, Ruby and Weiss watching curiously.  
  
Yang flashed Blake a grin. She easily fought the urge to return the gesture and turned her attention to the other girls. “So now, I’ll show you how to break a chokehold, front and back.”

“Shouldn’t you take it easy just a little bit?” Yang asked, a hand running through her blonde locks.

“I’m not performing the chokeholds, you are,” Blake said and shot her a glance.

“Heh… still. But okay.”  
  
“Don’t go easy,” Blake reminded.

“Fine, fine.”  
  
“I’ll just demonstrate first and then explain step-by-step.” Blake continued as she turned her back to Yang after giving her an expectant look.

“Don’t you go easy, either,” Yang murmured to her and Blake scoffed.

When Yang’s arms came around her neck, immediately Blake could sense the raw power she possessed. Yang locked her fingers around her wrist and tightened the hold, the junction of her elbow crushing into her windpipe with astounding force as her body was pressed hard against the blonde.What happened next was instinct. Blake’s hands found the lock of Yang’s hold and she took a large step to her right. She twisted out of the curve of Yang’s arm and placed her left foot behind her. She brought Yang’s right arm with her and wrenched it behind her back. Blake then kicked Yang’s calf, buckling her knee and bringing her down before jarring her arm up.

“FUCK!” Yang cursed loudly and Blake grinned, holding the position.  
  
“Don’t try to continue fighting here. Kick or punch the face and run.” Blake made the gesture to kick but fell short in the completion of it. She let Yang go and the blonde gasped as she pulled her arm to her chest, cradling it.

“Okay, I asked for that,” Yang said, trying to force a chuckle.

“That was awesome, Blake!” Ruby piped up. Both her and Weiss began to clap in awe.

“Hey, are we not going to talk about how I’m hurt down here?”

“Can we see it again? But a bit slower?” Weiss asked excitedly.

Yang’s jaw dropped. “Hey!”

“Of course. I’ll go over it one more time and you can both put it to some practice.”

After a reiteration or two and some gentle application, Blake decided they had the basics down well enough and began to instruct them through escaping a front choke hold. With her back pressed to a nearby fallen pillar and Yang once again acting as the aggressor, the lesson began.

However.

It was strange, in a word, to feel the pressure of Yang’s hands with her amethyst eyes locked to her own. The tightening around her throat lacked intention but the solidarity was still present. That power hinging the joints of her fingers closed and the strength of her biceps firmly securing the hold were suddenly _so_ distracting.

Her body ignited in a warm rush as her hands flew up to grasp onto Yang’s wrists.

It was a slip of the mind that Blake accidentally succumbed to the hold longer than she intended. Her breath had been completely cut off and she could feel her pulse hammer against the tightness of Yang’s hands.

With Ruby and Weiss back over Yang’s shoulder, they couldn’t see the concentration seep away from the blonde’s focused features and melt into something akin to amusement.

Blake’s face flushed‒from embarrassment or from the lack of oxygen to her brain, she didn’t know.  
  
Regaining herself, Blake quickly threw up her arms in between the loop Yang created with her arms, the blonde’s elbows buckling in and her grasp coming completely off in surprise. The next step was unnecessary, but in her flustered state, Blake grabbed the blonde’s shoulders and forced her down into a sharp knee to the side, effectively knocking the wind out of her.

Yang huffed and doubled over, coughing. She cursed under her breath and Blake elected to ignore Yang’s underhanded comment about liking it rough, sarcastic or not. She was sure neither Ruby nor Weiss had heard. At that moment, she cursed her sharp sense of hearing.

Blake turned away to coo away the blush on her face as Ruby and Weiss clapped at the display, albeit Weiss was alarmingly a bit more hesitant as she looked back and forth between the faunus and the blonde.

“It’s simple,” Blake started. She wasn’t even sure if she was clear enough in the instructions, but the two of them seemed to perform the break well enough.  
  
While the three of them switched places and practiced the techniques, Blake took a seat next to the fire, realizing how tired she was from just a little bit of exertion. She had a long way to go to build her strength back up.

The heel of her boot hit something that rattled on the sheet metal beneath her and she peaked down at her spoils from earlier that morning. She reached down and picked up the thin aluminum box, turning it in her grasp. It rattled again with something she couldn’t pinpoint.

Blake worked her fingers around the lid. It was slightly bent inward and resisted her as she wrestled it off. Inside, there was one pen and one dull pencil along with a folded piece of thick paper. She fished out the paper and the pen and pencil clanked against the bottom of the box.

Blake set the box aside and unfolded the paper to unveil a world map. There were circles, paths, and words scribbled occasionally on it’s surface. She laid it flat out onto the floor, the fire illuminating its surface.

Ruby plopped down across from her followed by the other two girls.

Weiss leaned over and took interest in what Blake was looking at. “A map?”

The faunus nodded and withdrew the pen from the box. She uncapped it and her eyes scanned the stretch of land. She added a couple marks of her own. X’s and triangles.

“What’re those for?” Weiss inquired.

“The X’s represent where I’m positive bomb strikes have hit. And triangles are hidden White Fang bases that could still be in commission.”

At that, Weiss made a noise of offense. “Look, Blake. It doesn’t matter how good person _you_ are, there’s no way we’re going to a White Fang base. It’s just not safe for humans.”

“It’s going to be hard to fit anywhere with the four of us,” Yang added quietly.

“We have to go to the White Fang. It’s the only way we survive any of this.” Blake argued, irritation sinking into her voice. She was angry that she was stuck with these three. But she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if the people who saved her life ended up perishing before she could do something about it.

“We have to think about what’s best for the group! Let’s not dismiss that idea!” Weiss matched Blake’s tone, much to Ruby and Yang’s increasing discomfort and dismay.

“What do you think I’m trying to do?”

“How in the world is it safe for us to go to one of these hideouts?” Weiss threw out a hand questioningly.  
  
“I trust my colleagues to be level-headed and trust me!”  
  
“What are you going to say?! That you’ve brought back captives and use us as some sort of bargaining chip?”

Blake fumed. “That isn’t my intention at all!”

Suddenly, the sharp noise of radio static pierced the air. “ _crrrsh_ _‒_ S, This is the Unit ‒ _shh_ _‒_ Relief Organization, repeat, this is a nation ‒ _ssssh_ _‒_ signal, calling all ‒ _ssssss_ _‒_ ”

All four of the girls’ attention snapped towards the car. In a moment of disbelief, they sat as the transmission blared on before all of them processed it at once.

They clattered towards the noise, Ruby’s hands first arriving at the radio’s knobs to hone in on the frequency. The volume shot up, blaringly loud as she tuned into the strongest signal.

“If you are hearing this, you are not alone. This is a transmission from Sanctum of Southern Vale to all frequencies across the country. If you are lost, come here to be found. The UVRO, VCND, and the Gauntlet are here for you. Repeat, this is a transmission from Sanctum of Southern Vale‒”  
  
“Sanctum! I can totally get us there!” Yang piped up.

“Oh my gosh! People! There are people there!” Ruby tried to bounce up and down in excitement, but Yang was squishing her from leaning over too far above her.

“My father might be there!” Weiss said.

“I don’t know about this,” Blake said, uneasy.

Weiss sighed, remembering the argument they were just having. “This is our best chance! At least with the Gauntlet, they won’t try to kill us or you on sight! The White Fang will!”

“You don’t know anything about the White Fang!” Blake stood abruptly away from the vehicle, eyes pressed into angry slits and her fists clenched.

Weiss stepped out and confronted the faunus. “I do know what they’re capable of! Just look around! Does this look like the work of a group of people who want to protect the people that lived here?!” Weiss signaled to their surroundings.

“You don’t know your own government, then! You are utterly _clueless_ about the Gauntlet’s base operations as it stands!”

Yang finally stepped forward. “Alright, stop! What the hell, you two? We’re in this together! We can’t have you two at each other like this!” She gave the two of them hard stares, both Weiss and Blake’s eyes averting her own stubbornly.

“Weiss, understand that Blake feels safer with the White Fang…” Ruby’s knowing silver eyes held sympathy. “Of course you’re not going to agree there.”

“So what, you’re taking _her_ side now?” Weiss shot accusingly.

“There are no sides!” Yang yelled, her voice echoing off of the broken architecture of the whole block.

Ruby and Weiss were shocked at having heard her raise her voice. Blake knew of that person underneath Yang‒that person that was burning up from the pressures and uncertainties in lieu of keeping everything moving for her sister.

“We can’t afford sides right now,” Yang continued in a significantly softer tone. “Our world is divided and that’s what destroyed it. Faunus and humans… we have to work together. What the hell makes you think following in the same steps as everyone else is going to change anything?”  
  
No answer came from anyone. Yang went on. “We need each other. Not one of us can do this on our own. So we need to figure out what works for everyone.”

After another pause, Yang turned to focus on Blake. “We want to help you, Blake. But I agree with Weiss. I’m not comfortable with the idea of being kept in a secret base because I can’t predict what comes next. At least at Sanctum, we can all go there with you as long as no one recognizes you as a White Fang member. You can leave that all behind you.”  
  
“I can’t do that,” Blake replied quickly. “I can’t just forget.”  
  
Ruby stepped forward as Yang was about to pry. “Then don’t forget. As Yang said, we do want to help you. Even Weiss.”  
  
At that, Weiss huffed and looked away, her arms crossed.

“Weiss wants to be reunited with her family. I hope our family is there, too…” Ruby swallowed and faltered in her confidence. She then shook her head and perked up, a newfound determination lighting her eyes. “We all want something, so let’s do these things for each other! That includes helping you with what you want. But you have to tell us what it is and how we can help.”

Blake heavily considered Ruby's words. Her mission… it wasn’t such a simple one. She would have to share more than she wanted to in order to make the whole ordeal palpable. Ultimately, the duty shouldn’t have to fall on them. Only herself.

“Look… I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me so far. But it wouldn’t be right for me to ask you all to do this for me.” Blake started. She had decided, then. “You’ve helped me survive. That’s more than enough. I’ll accompany you to Sanctum. But then, we must part ways. That’s just how it has to be.”

The silence that settled was a somber one.

“Okay,” Ruby spoke first, her expression sad but understanding.

Weiss sighed and turned away, done with contributing to the conversation.

Yang’s expression steeled. “I guess so,” she said. Blake could have sworn there was a note of bitterness in her words.

They all settled for the night. The chairs were folded down again into the bed of the car and they began to pack in tight.

Ruby offered to take watch. Yang took up her place instead, saying that Ruby needed her sleep most of all as a growing girl. Embarrassed, Ruby fought no more on the matter, almost immediately falling asleep when she laid down. Blake and Weiss followed her soon after.

When the chill of the autumn night began to seep in two hours after sunset, Yang closed the trunk door and turned the heater on low, waking Blake up in the process.

Yang said nothing when the faunus slipped into the passenger seat from the back, quiet and agile in her movements. She didn’t budge her amethyst eyes from the driver side mirror. Her knees were pulled close to her chest as she sat in an uncomfortable looking position, her boots trying to rest on the middle console next to the gear shift and her arms crossed tight against her chest.

Blake looked out the passenger side mirror. There wasn’t much to see ahead aside from the blockage of the fallen buildings across the narrow path.

A beat passed as the hum of the heater circulated warm air throughout the car. Then‒

“I wanted to‒”

“I think I should‒”

Two soft-spoken voices overlapped as they both came out of the silence with the intention to start a conversation and stopped. Yang peaked over at the faunus, adjusted to the dark enough to just barely see her ears flatten in embarrassment. “Um… you go ahead.”

Blake shuffled a bit in her seat, pulling up one knee to her chest as she tried to get comfortable. “I just… thought I should apologize for earlier.”

Yang was a bit confused. “For…?” She actually wasn’t sure.

“For making things difficult. With Weiss,” Blake said, her voice lowering considerably. “I guess I should be apologizing to her, but let’s just say I’m saying sorry for the both of us. We put you in a hard position.”  
  
“Nah,” Yang found herself automatically replying. “I mean, I’m glad it happened. It seems like she’s been fighting the idea of you tagging along with us since the beginning, so she jumped at the chance to try and discredit you, even if you were coming from a good place. But I think she gets that we’re working for each other now. Even if it’s just for a little longer.”

Blake stole a glance over at the other girl at that. Yang’s eyes shot forward, pretending to be busy with the rear view mirror.

The blonde sighed under her breath. “Anyway, I’m glad that’s all you were worried about. Thought you were gonna try and explain your way outta your weird breathplay kink or something.”

Blake huffed and looked away. “Shut up. Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Okay, okay. If you say so,” Yang chuckled gently. “I was going to thank you for the little self-defense sessions. I think they’re a great idea and it’ll give us all something to work on in the long run.”

Blake pulled out the pistol from the holster strapped to her chest. Yang had forgotten she even had a gun holster. It was hidden by her sleeveless jacket.

“Don’t thank me until you all get to Sanctum. Until then, we have to get you all caught up to using your weapons to their maximum potential.”

“Right,” Yang murmured as she watched Blake pull out the magazine, the telltale gleam of bullets catching her attention. She suddenly felt a lot more at ease with the protection of a loaded gun accompanying her.

“Oh, hey. You should be asleep. You couldn’t have gotten enough rest during the drive today.”

“I’m not tired,” Blake replied quickly. She assembled the gun and placed it on the dashboard.

Yang shrugged. “Don’t tell me faunus don’t need a full eight hours of sleep.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

Blake hesitated. “I don’t know.”  
  
Yang managed to sense the lie. What would it take for the faunus to open up a little bit?

Blake met her amused gaze, an inhuman shimmer catching in her gold eyes as she turned that caused Yang to straighten up a bit in surprise. Right. The whole night vision thing.

Why did she know so little about faunus? They had been on the damn planet since what was pretty much the beginning of time, albeit on a whole other continent. Yang hadn’t met very many, but she had always tried to understand. Why was it that she was still so damn ignorant? She wanted to know so much more about Blake. She couldn’t even begin to try and start.

The blonde sighed as she tried to think of how to move the conversation on. “What, don’t think I can punch a sneak in the face when I see one?”

Blake made a sound that could have been a one-beat laugh. She didn’t reply.

Yang adopted a small smirk. “By the way…” She put her legs down and sat in the chair normally, reaching into the middle console to pull out a small book. “I nagged it from Ruby’s bag. She always keeps it on her. You wanted something to read, right?”

Blake looked to book as it was offered out, her pleasant surprise causing Yang’s smirk to meld into a smile. The faunus took it, her eyes easily reading the title in the dark. “Fairytales?”

“Yeah. Used to read them to her when she was little. She keeps them around as a little pick-me-up. Reminds her of some good times. Even before all this happened, it was sorta tough being out on our own. There’s some endearing stuff in there. You’ll see what I mean when you read it.” Yang explained.

“I see…” Blake turned the book in her palms and flipped through the pages a bit. “... thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Yang said softly back.

The hours melded together. Nothing in the world seemed to move or change.

Yang slowly lulled off to sleep, fighting the urge for what felt like forever. She could have sworn that during some time in the night, a timid touch brushed against her shoulder and withdrew before she dozed off.


End file.
